Melting Glaciers
I notice when people write to me opposing climate change and what is happening at Copenhagen, they are often abusive, usually present some outrageous emails they have received from America or Queensland, and make no argument or present no evidence at all. It is as if the email they have received is unanswerable and that anyone who does not believe it is stupid and ungodly.
There has been no issue of public policy in my memory that has received such little debate. The method of opposition is by labelling people and slurring their reputation. On the other hand, the generation of people who debated the Vietnam War was extremely vocal, rational, and argumentative. With climate change, I have seen very little evidence that disputes much of the scientific findings, but instead wholesale attack on the methodology and motives of scientists, with the worst slurs upon impoverished nations, and outspoken leaders like Rudd and Obama (neither of whom has done a good job in explaining their concerns and programs).
For example, in these pages previously I presented evidence and links to photographs over decades of the melting polar ice caps. Many people attacked that but no one disproved the evidence or showed the photographs and satellite images were wrong.
I am not sure of the validity of all that is presented as evidence, and I am not sure how much blame can be placed on the human cause of carbon emissions. What I am sure of is that parts of the world are now suffering from what only can be caused by climate change. Take for instance, the matter of the melting glaciers of the third ice cap.
Reports from the Himalayan glaciers indicate that precipitation has dropped during the past quarter-century as temperatures have risen, a possible consequence of climate change. Bryan Walsh for TIME reports that the real threat is to the heart of the greater Himalayas and the vast Tibetan Plateau, where glaciers hold water in the largest collection of land ice outside the polar regions. He writes that scientists call this area ‘the third pole’ — but when it comes to clear and present threats from climate change, it may be the most important.
The high-altitude glaciers of the Himalayas and the Tibetan Plateau — which covers areas across the nations of India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan and China — are the water source of much of Asia. With the thawing of the ice and the melting of the snow each year, the glaciers become the marvellous rivers of the region, and together are the mightiest river system in the world: the Ganges, the Indus, the Brahmaputra, the Mekong, the Yellow and Yangtze. The lives of billions of people and animals, and the crops grown for food, all depend upon this constant water flow.
Together, these rivers give material sustenance to 3 billion people, nearly half of the world’s population — and all are nursed by Himalayan ice. The ice melt has always been regular and dependable in the past but it is now rapidly reducing.
The melting of the Polar ice caps does not have a direct effect on populations except for the rise in sea levels. But the melting of the Himalayas has dire consequences for the billions downstream from the Himalayas who are dependent on it for survival. This is a population that is already stressed for water, even if the ice doesn’t disappear. Most of South Asia is already in a state of water scarcity, as is much of China.
There is competition for water used in agriculture and industry. There is a widening gap between water supplies and needs. By 2030, India alone will have only 50% of the water that it needs under a business-as-usual scenario.
Independent scientific studies indicate that the third pole is melting fast, probably because of warming temperatures brought on by climate change. Since 1960, almost a fifth of the Indian Himalayas’ ice coverage has disappeared, and glaciers in the Himalayas were “receding faster than at any other place in the world.”
Back in 1980 as I examined the competing demands of Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and Israel for the scarce supplies of water from the River Jordan, I predicted that future wars would be fought over water. Now it involves the world’s largest populations of China, India and other countries.
How can the climate sceptics and deniers answer that concern?
Reference: Bryan Walsh, The Tragedy of the Himalayas, TIME Magazine, 4 December 2009.
Rev the Hon. Dr Gordon Moyes AC MLC