Wringing China dry and blaming climate change – ‘Catastrophic urbanisation’ has caused up to 28,000 rivers to vanish since the 1990s

BEIJING, 23 September 2013 (Reuters) – For China, global warming has become something of a convenient truth. Beijing blames climate change for wreaking havoc on scarce water resources, but critics say the country’s headlong drive to build its industrial prowess and huge hydro projects are just as responsible. On the eve of a global climate […]

Floods in India leave devastation akin to an inland tsunami – The government ‘angered Lord Shiva, and a few hours later there was cloudburst and floods’

[Somehow missed posting this back in July, but Des definitely wants to keep this story.] By Dr. Manpreet Bajwa and Dr. Harman Boparai 6 July 2013 LACHMOLI, India (Global Post) – Ninety-year-old Sarita’s sunken eyes stared into the damp earth that had flooded into the terrace of her one bedroom house. Her two grandchildren played […]

Image of the Day: Satellite view of Kedarnath after June 2013 flood

By Raju Gusain29 June 2013 Dehradun (India Today) – New satellite images of Kedarnath clearly indicate the devastation which has taken place there. The images, taken by US based NASA’s Landsat 8 satellite on 23 June 2013, when compared with old National Remote Sensing Centre (NRSC) images provided by the Uttarakhand Space Application Centre, show […]

Rotting corpses spark fears of epidemic amid ‘Himalayan tsunami’ – ‘It’s very difficult to know the real figures and the scale of the disaster’

By Nita Bhalla; Editing by Nick Macfie26 June 2013 NEW DELHI (Reuters) – Rotting corpses contaminating water sources and poor sanitation amid devastating floods in northern India could lead to a serious outbreak of diseases such as cholera and dysentery, aid groups warned on Wednesday. The floods, triggered by heavy monsoon rains more than 10 […]

Scientists find extensive glacial retreat in Mount Everest region – Glaciers have shrunk by 13 percent in the last 50 years and the snowline has shifted upward by 180 meters

By: Sudeep Thakuri, Graduate School of Earth, Environment and Biodiversity, University of Milan, Milan, MB, Italy, and Water Research Institute, National Research Council , Brugherio, MB, Italy and colleagues Contact: Sarah Charley, +1 (202) 777-7516scharley@agu.org13 May 2013 Cancún, Mexico (AGU) – Researchers taking a new look at the snow and ice covering Mount Everest and […]

Plans to harness Chinese river’s power threaten a region – ‘Why can’t China have just one river that isn’t destroyed by humans?’

By ANDREW JACOBS4 May 2013 BINGZHONGLUO, China (The New York Times) – From its crystalline beginnings as a rivulet seeping from a glacier on the Tibetan Himalayas to its broad, muddy amble through the jungles of Myanmar, the Nu River is one of Asia’s wildest waterways, its 1,700-mile course unimpeded as it rolls toward the […]

Morality of global warming: Faith leaders look beyond science, politics – ‘This is about the well-being of the entire communion of life’

By JUDY FAHYS21 April 2013   (The Salt Lake Tribune) – Rob Gillies and his team gather data on Nepal’s changing climate for a research project. They log temperatures, raindrops and snow. They pump the numbers into powerful computers and read the trend lines the computers spit out. Gillies sees the numbers in human terms, too. […]

Economist warns millions at risk from climate change – ‘We haven’t been above five degrees Celsius on this planet for about 30 million years. So you can see that this is radical change way outside human experience.’

WASHINGTON, 3 April 2013 (AFP) – The author of an influential 2006 study on climate change warned Tuesday that the world could be headed toward warming even more catastrophic than expected but he voiced hope for political action. Nicholas Stern, the British former chief economist for the World Bank, said that both emissions of greenhouse […]

China gives green-light to new era of mega-dams – ‘I’m still shocked by the lack of transparency in the decision-making process’

By Beth Walker1 February 2013 (China Dialog) – China has confirmed it will resurrect a series of controversial hydropower dams in south-west China on rivers originating on the Tibetan Plateau, causing ripples of consternation from India and other downstream neighbours. The 2011-15 energy sector blueprint, released by China’s State Council last week, confirmed  plans to […]

Expert highlights survival concerns for Pakistan as climate changes

Islamabad, 22 September 2012 (The International News) – Increasing threats due to negative impacts of climate change are the cause of major survival concerns for Pakistan, particularly in terms of its water security, food security, and energy security considerations. An official of Climate Change Ministry said the government has taken short- and long-term measures that […]

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