The Golden 80s

It is now or never’ if world is to stave off climate disaster, says The Guardian report on the latest reports from the IPCC.  What exactly are these reports? The  IPCC website says, " The IPCC prepares comprehensive Assessment Reports (AR) about knowledge on climate change, its causes, potential impacts and response options . It adds that " The IPCC also produces Special Reports, which are an assessment on a specific issue and Methodology Reports, which provide practical guidelines ." The latest reports called AR 6 reports are on the following: AR6 Synthesis Report: Climate Change 2022 AR6 Climate Change 2022: Mitigation of Climate Change AR6 Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability The IPCC Working Group II (WGII) assesses the impacts of climate change, from a world-wide to a regional view. This is what I understood after reading a slew of news reports: Substantial reduction of greenhouse gas emissions beyond what governments committed. Emissions gap...

Heavy rainfall in India not associated with global warming It is common nowadays to link spells of rainfall and the collateral damage they create to climate change. It is not the rains, but the urban mayhem and disaster bred by human incompetence, so characteristic of India, that is hyped by the breaking news hungry media. A report published in The Hindu newspaper says that "... extreme rainfall events over India do not have significant association with land surface air temperature over India and sea surface temperature over central Indian Ocean. .." The report, quoting a paper in Scientific Reports , says that the widely held belief that climate change is responsible over extreme rainfall patterns in the tropics does not seem to be true. The authors recommend that "...the changing patterns of extremes over the Indian subcontinent need a scientific re-evaluation, which is possible due to availability of the unique long-term in-situ data."

It is known that the GDP figures hyped by the media to credit or discredit political formations in India do not "account" the environmental damage caused by the so-called "Development." There were seminal papers published that questioned the entire economics paradigm that still stood united behind the GDP as the yardstick for growth. But, Indian economists and foreign-educated ultra-liberal growth pundits have no time to read about Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI) that accounts or discounts the environmental damage caused by mindless growth. (Renaissance took place in Europe, right?). Advocates of GPI do not claim that it is perfect. But while our journalists pillory governments over GDP figures, let us be aware that there are other perspectives to look at how growth is contributing to human and environmental welfare. Check this link: http://rprogress.org/sustainability_indicators/genuine_progress_indicator.htm

Ben Goldacre , whose blog I like very much, points to an exciting link on how to "deal' with climate change scceptics. It is a "...a handy one-stop shop for all the material you should need to rebut the more common anti-global warming science arguments constantly echoed accross the internet..." Click How to Talk to a Climate Sceptic

A few interesting links on the Copenhagen Climate summit: It was a great gesture to see 16 newspapers publishing a common editorial on climate change. As expected, only The Hindu daily from India published the editorial. Common editorial on Copenhagen The Hindu link: http://www.hindu.com/2009/12/07/stories/2009120757400100.htm The Guardian link on Copenhagen: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2009/dec/04/copenhagen-climate-change-conference-liveblog Climate change through cycle http://rideplanetearth.org/