DP-Index-mar08-lead8
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A section of
DOCPOST which is an
extract, executive
summary, index
rolled into one.
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MELTING GLACIERS
Melting glaciers bigger cause of
rising sea levels than estimated
Melting
ice from Himalyan glaciers and
other global ice sheets has contributed more to the rise in the
global sea level over the past 80 years than was previously
estimated, increasing the need for an effective global emission
control regime. The findings are being released in Friday's issue of
journal Science. A G20 meet on climate kicks off in Tokyo on Friday.
In their article, researchers from the National Central University in
Taiwan report that the contribution of ice melt is higher than
previously thought because earlier calculations have left out the
contribution of water reservoirs that, it turns out, have been
responsible for a drop in sea level by 30mm over the past 50 years.
India's glaciers are melting fast and the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change (IPCC), the scientific body meant to study climate
change,
warned in 2007 that if
steps were not taken to check this, there was a likelihood of water
shortage in rivers (when needed) and flooding of coastal regions.
by
Seema Singh, Mint, 14/03/2008
Glaciers
suffer record shrinkage
The
rate at which some of the world's
glaciers are melting has more than doubled, data from the United
Nations Environment Programme has shown.
Achim Steiner,
Under-Secretary General
of the UN and executive director of its environment programme (UNEP),
said: "Millions if not billions of people depend directly or
indirectly on these natural water storage facilities for drinking
water, agriculture, industry and power generation during key parts of
the year.
BBC News, 16/03/2008
'Himalayan tragedy awaits India,
China'
Shrinking
Himalayan glaciers are going
to turn Chinese and Indian rivers like the Ganga and the Yangtze into
seasonal rivers that dry up in summers and could eventually lead to
"politically unmanageable food shortages" in the
region, a
leading environmental scientist has warned.
by
Chidanand Rajghatta, The Times of
India, 21/03/2008
Gangotri
from
here to eternity
Leading
Indian scientists take a dim
view of doomsayers who predict that the glacier that feeds the sacred
Ganga will disappear due to global warming in the next 40 years.
by
Ashish Tripathi, The Times of India,
25/03/2008,
A
Glacial
Vanishing Act
Glaciers,
the world's freshwater
towers, continue their record-breaking meltdown, a new U.N. report
shows. The average rate of thinning and melting more than doubled
between 2004 and 2006, reports the World Glacier Monitoring Service
(WGMS), a centre based at the University of Zurich in
Switzerland."The latest figures are part of what appears to be
an accelerating trend with no apparent end in sight," said
Wilfried Haeberli, director of the WGMS.The accelerated glacier
meltdown is a clear indicator that climate change has taken hold and
millions if not billions will be affected, warned Achim Steiner,
executive director of the U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP)
by
Stephen Leahy, Counter Currents.org,
18/03/2008
Antarctic
shelf 'hangs by thread'
A
chunk of ice the size of the Isle of
Man has started to break away from Antarctica in what scientists say
is further evidence of a warming climate. Satellite images suggest
that part of the ice shelf is disintegrating, and will soon crumble
away.
by
Helen Briggs, BBC News, 25/03/2008
