By Ben Webster, Environment Editor The World Bank is spending billions of pounds subsidising new coal-fired power stations in developing countries despite claiming that burning fossil fuels exposes the poor to catastrophic climate change. The bank, which has a goal of reducing poverty and is funded by Britain and other developed countries, calls on all […]
Lukla, Nepal (AFP) Aug 30, 2009 – Over two decades, Funuru Sherpa has watched the lake above his native village of Dengboche in Nepal’s Himalayas grow, as the glacier that feeds it melts. The 29-year-old, who runs a busy Internet cafe for tourists visiting the Everest region, remembers his grandfather telling him that 50 years […]
Bhattegaun, Nepal (AFP) Aug 28, 2009 – Three years ago Naina Shahi’s husband left their small village in rural Nepal to seek work in neighbouring India, leaving her to bring up their three children alone. The dry winters and unpredictable monsoons Nepal has experienced in recent years had hit crop production on the couple’s land […]
Siachen Glacier in Ladakh has receded by about 800 m in the last 20 years and is facing threat of climate change caused by military activities in the region, claims a UN official. Considered most strategic in terms of defence needs of the country and manned round-the-clock at temperatures of minus 50 to 60 degrees […]
Cumulative (a) specific and (b) total mass balances of glaciers and ice caps, calculated for large regions [Dyurgerov and Meier, 2005]. Specific mass balances signalize the strength of the glacier response to climatic change in each region. Total mass balances indicate each region’s contribution to sea level. G. Kaser, J. G. Cogley, M. B. Dyurgerov, […]
Beijing (AFP) June 20, 2009 – A drought in Tibet has intensified into the region’s worst in three decades, leaving thousands of hectares parched and killing more than 13,000 head of cattle, China’s state media said Saturday. The report by Xinhua news agency follows a warning by China’s top weather official last month that the […]
The steady retreat of glaciers on China’s Qinghai-Tibet plateau during the past 40 years is troubling, scientists in the Asian nation said Wednesday. Xin Yuanhong, senior engineer in charge of a three-year field study, said the glaciers at the headwaters of the Yangtze, China’s longest river, now cover 406 square miles, down from 482 square […]
By By Shahid Husain Karachi — Global warming and the ongoing thinning of Tibetan glaciers will result in as many as 15 million ‘environmental refugees’ in South Asia in the near future, said Chairperson Hisaar Foundation and member of Stockholm-based Global Water Partnership Technical Committee, Simi Kamal. She made the observation at a selected gathering […]
KATHMANDU (Reuters) – Nepal’s crippling electricity shortage is set to worsen, with the Himalayan nation facing power cuts of 16 hours a day by mid-February, officials said on Friday, in a fresh blow to the Maoist-led government. Power generation has fallen because mountain snows are not melting fast enough in winter and river levels are […]
KYANGJIN GOMPA, Nepal (AFP) – Standing in the Himalayan valley of Langtang, Rinjin Dorje Lama remembers where he used to play as a child in the 1960s. "When I was a kid, it was a lot longer," said Lama, pointing at the Lirung glacier surrounded by snowy peaks on Nepal’s northern border with Tibet. "We […]
