Abhi mentioned the documentary An Inconvenient Truth earlier this week. I just saw it, and I think it’s beautifully done as well — I would strongly recommend it. Even if you don’t think much of Al Gore as a politician, the science is convincing and all the pictures of vanishing glaciers and dried-up inland lakes (Lake Chad!; the Aral Sea!) are terrifying.
In the film, Gore refers several times to the potential catastrophic consequences of Global Warming in the Indian subcontinent. It’s somewhat ironic, because countries on the Indian subcontinent are far smaller contributors of greenhouse gases than the developed countries (India’s per capita emissions are one sixth the world average) but you can be sure that the subcontinent will feel its effects. As I understand it, there are two major consequences of global warming for the Indian subcontinent that are essentially guarantees, and a third which seems to me to be a maybe:First guarantee: significant amounts of land in the Bay of Bengal are going to disappear if oceans rise even 1 foot, as is predicted to occur in the next 50 years. Most estimates I’ve found give the number at about 15% of the total landmass of Bangladesh, with a comparable loss of land in West Bengal on the Indian side. As many as 60 million people will be displaced in both countries.
In Orissa, the receding coastline is already a fact of life. In the Satabhaya region of the Orissa coastline, according to this article, the shore has moved 2.5 km inland over the past 25 years, displacing a number of villages. And it continues to move. (The article doesn’t specify what could be causing the rising sea levels in that specific part of the state.)
In the short run, scientists are already noting a pattern of a growing number of low pressure systems (leading to cyclones) in the Bay of Bengal in the post-Monsoon season. These are expected to worsen — meaning that extreme storms may force mass evacuations of coastal regions well before the land itself disappears. (See this article for more.) Also, erosion caused by the storms is already seriously affecting these regions. As Banglapedia puts it:
Flooding and erosion/sedimentation Bangladesh experiences moderate to severe flooding every year. Frequent storm surges also cause severe coastal flooding. The flood situation is further aggravated by the high tide in the Bay of Bengal. It has been seen with a 1.4m rise in sea level water level rises to about 6m near the meghna estuary. Even with a 0.2m rise in sea level, water level rises between 4.5 and 5m near the estuary. Since most of the coastal area is below 1.5m above mean sea level (MSL) and the area near the confluence of the ganges and Meghna is below 3m above MSL, both depth and area of inundation will increase extensively. However, the water level in the Ganges and Upper Meghna also increases significantly due to backwater effect as a result of changes in the hydrodynamics of flow. Hence the severity and extent of flooding will increase even in the upstream portion of the river. On the other hand, a rise in sea level will also move the shoreline landward and this will result in loss of farmland, leading to the shifting of agriculture, reduced crop yields, and loss of cultivable areas. Increased flooding will cause problems with existing irrigation and drainage system too. (link)
Even small changes in the mean sea level could lead to a cascade of problems for the Bengal delta, because the water systems are all interdependent. Even before the land disappears, the damage caused by increased flooding is expected to make a lot of coastal land essentially uninhabitable.
Tyler Cowen, when he was in India a couple of years ago, did a thought experiment on this. It’s a little in the “heartless economist” vein, but it’s worth reading.
And here’s a Salon article about attempts that are being made in Bangladesh to raise awareness about the coming catastrophe.
The second guarantee: The glaciers will disappear, leaving all of the subcontinent’s major rivers dry. Abhi already posted on this last fall, though he didn’t get much of a response to this shocking fact at the time. These rivers, as everyone knows, provide the vast majority of water to India, Pakistan, Nepal, and Bangladesh. (And glacial water also feeds China; in total, 40 percent of the world’s population is dependent on water from the Himalayas.) The retreat of the Himalayan glaciers is not a prediction; it’s happening. The only question is when the effects will start to kick in. But I would say that even if it takes 100 years for the water supply to crash, it’s not to early to start doing something about it.
But here’s the irony: in the short run, the rapidly melting glaciers may actually cause flooding in the plains.
The third “maybe” consequence is that the whole weather pattern could change if ocean currents change as a result of rising water temperatures. The monsoon could disappear entirely (or it could double in intensity!). There’s not much to say about this — because no one really knows — except that it reminds us how little we really know about what is happening.
In An Inconvenient Truth Gore talks about an instance where scientists were surprised by the rapidity of change. In Antarctica, in 2002, the Larsen ice shelf collapsed over the course of a few weeks. No one predicted that a chunk of solid ice the size of Rhode Island could break up so fast. But now scientists think it was probably caused by earlier partial melting, leading to the creation of ‘moulins’ under the ice, that exponentially speed up the break-up of ice shelves. Those same moulins are being observed in Greenland, suggesting that large melt-offs may be imminent there too.
In effect, the predictions for ocean level rise over the next fifty years may be understatements: it could be much sooner than that. Scientists have been unpleasantly surprised by things like this before, and may be again.
Nice article Amardeep. I’ll have to watch the movie soon.
Another stunner from Amardeep…
All I want to know is where should I plan my retirement. Canada?
Great job on synthesizing all the needed info on Gobal Warming. I haven’t heard one bad thing yet about the movie, and it’ll be at the top of my list of “movies to watch when summer begins”!
Amardeep,
Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU for doing this post. We really need to be aware about what’s happening to our planet.
Amardeep, thanks for this post…I loved the movie, and it’s scary and shocking in the simplicity of its message. We hear so much about global warming, melting glaciers, rising temperatures in our daily lives, especially in the context of the US refusing to ratify the Kyoto protocols, that it’s easy to brush aside as just another political controversy. For me, the most powerful part of the movie was the credits in the end and the suggestions on how each individual can help. Where I saw the movie in DC, the theater had flyers on ten things each individual can do to reduce our footprint on the environment – if a theater near you has the same, pick one up and pass it out or better yet, tell your friends to go to the web site
Good post.
We need to preserve/increase carbon dioxide ‘sinks’ in the world. Reduction of emissions and switching to different types of energy sources, basic conservation, etc. will have an impact, but it is only on half of what needs to be done.
The Amazon and other rain forests are the largest carbon dioxide sinks in the world. We need to get that pesky carbon back into the ground where it belongs to bring balance to the cycle (or not exaggerate the natural cold/hot weather cycles of the earth)).
Plant more trees! One of the reasons I love the midwest is neighborhoods are draped in tree cover. In Southern California, there isn’t even space to have a back yard, forget real oak trees lining the sidewalks. I’m glad mayor Daley in Chicago is pushing for the city to become ‘green’. The southwest of this country needs to be turned into a solar energy sink with individual homes/businesses lined with solar energy tiles (ones that look like roofing, or regular panels). Give citizens who adopt green technologies major tax breaks and incentives. This isn’t something big companies and governments will be able to patch up or manage unless citizens are brough in the fold with honest solutions.
Speculation: Bengal gets a big influx of refugees from submerged Bangladesh coastal areas, India has to find entirely new freshwater sources and increase its reliance on nuclear energy, and a double intensity monsoon means more reservoirs and a drainage system that will actually get fixed.
Isn’t India already trying to buy water from Latin America?
Just came from the film and am so moved. Thanks for this post! Gore simplifies the global warming catastrophe in a way that makes it more real–and more frightening–than could ever meet the naked eye. Here’s to hoping this galvanizes the country to do something about the problem. Great African proverb closes the film (“When you pray, move your feet”) (something like that). Images of Lake Chad & the dried up fishing rivers were abhorring. Just did a quick post about it, but this is fantastic. I especially appreciated the film’s underscoring of the world catastrophes that have resulted from this predicament, including the massive heatwaves in India and the 2005 Mumbai floods, covered by SM last year. Ebert’s review says it best:
“In 39 years, I have never written these words in a movie review, but here they are: You owe it to yourself to see this film. If you do not, and you have grandchildren, you should explain to them why you decided not to.”
Thanks for reminding the readers there are more important issues to debate on rather than some chick-lit!!
I visited the link posted by SP (#9) which shows how individuals can do something, and was pleasantly surprised to find that I have been following each of those tidbits for at least the last decade. There’s at least one important to-do that the site misses: Whenever possible, avoid using paper/plastic cups/vessels/spoons etc. I have a mug at work that I use for coffee/water – even when I go to Starbucks near work, I ask them to fill the mug instead of using their cups.
I don’t care much for Gore and his politicised movie – it exhorts governments to take action. I think individual action is more effective and implimentable.
M. Nam
Moornam, you’re no-paper-OR-plastic ways are highly commendable, but do you really think that all of us toting mugs around will do as much as the higher fuel-efficiency or carbon-dioxide emission standards?
How is individual action implementable when I spend my time seperating my recyclables, only to see the building superintendent dump it all into the same bin?
I know coasts in Sri Lanka are eroding…mostly from people mining coral and dynamite fishing. Coastal areas with intact coral barrier reefs suffered less damage even during the tsunami.
questions for physical science nerds:
1) don’t the himalayan glaciers provide only a small % of the year output of the north indian rivers, especially during winter? that is, their importance is as a stabilizing back up rather than the primary source of flow….
2) …which is the monsoon, speaking of which, if we are thinking “linearly,” would not the prediction be that “climate zones” would move north, ergo, the moonsoon would last longer as the tropical zone shifts north? (this is the general trend of the sahara over the past few hundred thousand years in regards to climate warming and cooling)
of course, this is complicated, so i am curious as to the current state of the science from the climate nerds.
Cic,
I can’t beleive I’m saying this, but I agree with Moornam.
Tragedy of the Commons, baby- ENST 101. If everyone in the nation stopped using styrofoam cups it would make a huge difference, but unfortunately it doesn’t happen. which doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it. Plus by fostering an attitude of stewardship for the environment with paper cups, etc.. the person is more likely to think of the environment in their daily actions/choices, and it will eventually feed to environmental action in other realms, such as voting an enviromentally friendly legislature, not buying an SUV, not gassing up at Exxon. I.e. it is a lot easier to get a mug carrier to sign an action alert than that dude that drives a hummer… Personally, it’s this latter reason that I find it so important to encourage people to recycle- to foster a stewardship attitude.
And if you spend the time to seperate your recycled to have your landlord ‘kaputs’ it, you can just as easily meet with him with a list of recycling companies and ask him to use one of them. He probably doesn’t have the time, nor know where to look. If everyone in the building signed a petition for change, you know it’d help. Collective action, baby…
[I have a Political Economy of Policy Adoption final in the morning- please ignore the jargon]
Taz, I agree that there’s a lack of personal incentive to take as much care of common resources, but that doesn’t mean that some people and institutions are not more able and willing to take advantage of that situation, leaving them and the people who govern them with more power to remedy the situation than others. To me, this implies that in addition to consumer action, attempts to make people with power actually address this issue (whether building super or president) are an important part of the solution. The ethos of environmentalism that you’re talking about probably has to have a confrontational wing to it for it to make its way into the popular consciousness even more and force changes from businesses, government, etc. though it’s of course possible that things are already perceived to be so bad with the environment that even corporations and the business lobby might see it in their interests to reduce environmental damage.
Incidentally, here’s wikipedia on global climate change, including a handy pie chart for the sources of emissions.
Totally. I don’t think we’re in disagreement here… 😉
We are definitely in dire need of institutional changes towards environmental sustainability, but I gotta agree with Taz on the power of individual behavior. Basic environmental politics will trace the history of the environmental movement along trends sparked by individuals, activist communities and social movements. Even if you spark no trends with your personal environmentalism, if you sat down and tried to calculate the amount of non-biodegradable or recyclable waste, your unnecessary consumption of scarce vital resources like water, and your emission of GHGs in a month/year/lifetime, you will be convinced that reducing your own ecological footptint can be a major relief for the environment. And if you still doubt the power of individuals reappropriating environmental ethics through example and social pressure, you should come to California’s central coast and try to toss a recyclable container in the regular trash. It’s the little things, you know… 😉
With regards to the political challenges for recognizing climate change as a real problem, the major qualm of critics over the past two decades has been that there is no global consensus on 1) what exactly is the environmental problem, 2) what exactly is its impact on the earth and 3) what exactly is the best solution for these problems. For question 3, I have my own qualms with Kyoto, but I think there has been overwhelming evidence in the past few years to confirm the UN stance on climate change for questions 1 and 2.
Also, I’m not saying that the tsunami was a result of climate change, but the natural disasters in those areas has made it clear that South and Southeast Asian countries cannot yet provide the kind of security for their peoples that comes with reliable technologies to predict natural disasters and credible political infrastructures to effectively facilitate emergency relief. Given that India and Thailand declined most offers of foreign aid for tsunami relief (India funding a huge portion of the aid to Sri Lanka by itself), the event of another natural disaster -climate based or otherwise- will put India in the same position. I’m not a fan of accepting foreign “aid”, but India will either have to invest heavily in domestic and regional public welfare services to prepare for the predicted climate changes OR accept that it cannot just refuse international aid at the expense of its people living and dying in misery from the lack of emergency relief- all just to try to prove that it is a major world power that is sufficiently providing for the victims.
Taz, I agree and am all for individuals dumping the styrofoam, but I also agree w/Cicatrix — for the reasons she said, but also because more active environmental policies and regulation often shape individual attitudes as much as vice versa, and in many cases can facilitate or stimulate the very individual/private efforts that you laud to overcome the collective action problems you rightly describe. In the absence of mandatory recycling, for example, many people wouldn’t even think about separating out glass, plastic, and mixed paper — for many of us, individual habits have been shaped by what government has done. Individual and private action very rarely takes place in a completely unregulated vacuum.
I’m not a climate nerd, alas. But here in Kerala, “summer” hits between March and the end of May. In recent years, the summer heat has crept into the end of February, and it’s gotten hotter. Certainly that was the case this year.
Along those lines, my grandmother used to say that, when she was a child, the rice from the paddy took more than a day to dry when left out in the sun. She died in 1991; by then the rice was typically dry by noon.
It’s June 12th as I write this. The monsoon rains which traditionally strike this part of the subcontinent – like clockwork – on May 31st/June 1st came early, lasted a few days, and haven’t been back to this part of the state in almost two weeks. I keep asking people, “Isn’t it supposed to be raining now?” and am told that typically June is “full rain”. This is often followed up by statements like, “everything is changing now…”. Global warming is high on the radar, but I have yet to hear this awareness accompanied by anything other than resignation.
All I’ve got are anecdotes – and I’m bracing myself for Razib to verbally eviscerate me for this highly un-quantitative post 😉 – but one need only spend a few days in any Indian city to understand why India qualifies among the top ten greenhouse gas emitters. Every time I come home and wash my hands, the water runs gray. Outside the Delhi CNG circuit, the buses continually decant plumes of diesel blackness. Burning garbage is still a common practice, except now that garbage is not just coconut shells and fish bones but a lot of plastic as well. When I really think about how much pollution I’m ingesting on a daily basis, I ponder getting the hell out of here ASAP. And then I remember – the country I’m returning to is the biggest culprit of them all…
Nobody has mentioned the evil car.
Walk, ride a bike, or take mass transportation- buses, trains, subways. Airlines for long distance and overseas travel, as well as ships (though kind of scary, being out in the middle of the ocean and not seeing any land at all).
It’s a long, stupid story, but I never properly learned how to ride a bike as a kid. My learning was interrupted, and then I got a complex about it, and my parents, especially my Dad, could never get me to try again. As a teenager and an adult I realized this had to change, but I kept procrastinating on learning properly and getting good enough to bike in the street as a commuter. I got bikes, they got stolen. I got another one last fall. It was a goal, but not a very important one.
Then I went to India for the first time since college and coughed up black for a month. The weather was out of whack, and apparently had been out of whack and would be out of whack. It was the first time we spend our entire trip only in the cities, and the first time we spent so much time moving around in that Asian Brown Cloud, and it was awful. The trip was incredibly hard on my family, almost ruinous, and I came back with sinuses so raw that I couldn’t sleep lying down the first night home b/c my mouth would pool with blood. Our shocked lungs all fell prey to bronchitis, and there were consequences, and we’ll be dealing with them for years and years.
As soon as I got better I dragged the bike to a parking lot, and my dad (who was delighted he could finally get me to try again after 18-odd years) finally got me going. I managed to get the hang of it there, and slowly I worked my way up–parking lots to empty playgrounds to sidewalks to city streets. It’s been my first priority for free time and good weather for several months now. A lot of people make fun of me and trying to deal with the rules of the road can be excruciatingly embarassing, but I’m blessed with some incredibly good friends, many of whom cheer me via phone and email and chat, patiently answering my stupidest questions and fears, and one in particular, Scotto (one of my guest bloggers too) who has spent huge chunks of time shepherding me around town and teaching me how to be safe about it. I blogged about this more generally the other day. My favorite story about this is how he always acts like it’s no big deal–but of course he has his little backpack, b/c he’s Mr. Prepared. So one time we were riding along, me in front, and I–who was so incredibly terrified of falling for all these years–crashed right into a telephone pole, and fell right off. He zoomed up to me all concerned, but I was laughing too hard to even tell him that I was okay. Turned out that little backpack has bandages and antibiotic ointment in it. Also turned out I did’t need ’em. I got up and we continued. Wow, that wasn’t so bad.
On Saturday a bunch of went to go see An Inconvenient Truth. On Sunday I made my first honest-to-goodness trip by myself. I had to walk the thing up a couple blocks of a hill, but man, flying down that hill was wonderful. I haven’t been a gym rat in a while, but I plan on joining a gym next week expressly to take advantage of bad-weather free time to keep training my muscles. My goal is to make it from the train station to my house, up a hill that makes car engines groan, and to my other regular destinations, so easily that I don’t even think of driving. God only knows how long it will take, especially since my life is sort of maximally stressed out right now, but it’s worth it. I just wish I had started sooner.
So while it’s true I’ll get all kinds of benefits and increasing tangential motivations out of this project, the overwhelming motivation was, and continues to be, a shocking awareness of how damaging we are.
I think the saddest blog I’ve ever read is this one by the son of NASA scientist Yoram Kaufmann. It was started when Dr. Kaufmann was injured by an automobile while biking to work, chronicles his progress and then his death. The family has decided to host a memorial showing of An Inconvenient Truth in celebration of their father’s lifetime of dedication to climate science. I used to read about bike accidents like that and subconsciously postpone yet again the day I’d try. Now this whole tragic story resonated, like a sitar-string, with a very different chord. How would Gandhi react to a story like this? When I read about this I thought, “I better go riding soon.”
I’m a total moron, a great sinner as we would say in Vaishnav parlance, when it comes to this stuff. But I’m trying to change. (My next goal is to follow MoorNam’s example and stick to my KleenKanteen and thermos mug.) And if I–wimpy, terrified-of-falling, procrastinating me–can even attempt to change my life even a little bit to stop this catastrophe, then I really think most of the people around here can probably do much better than me. Our community makes us proud and inspires us as individuals in so many ways. We were born with hearts already stretched around the globe. Of course we can be leaders in saving it.
The trend of climate change demonstrated by Al-gore and being talked here in thi article is very much true and alarming. We all have to take serious note of it. To me, we are going to pay the price of west.
The little knowledge that I have indiactes that with increasing population the emission of carbon dioxide increases. The CO2 emissions results in making cover around and stops the solar radiations to penetrate into the environment and reduces the atmospheric temperature. Reducing Atm Temp may cause the atm pressure to remain at moderate and high levels. This slows down the wind blows and hence results in reducing teh wind velocities. The Moonsoon pattern in sub-continent has usually been due to low pressures developed due to higher temperatures. The current pattern of lowering temperature in most parts of sub-continent would desrupt this pattern and the whole sub-continent is going to be affected by no or less Moonsoonic activities.
This is not over. The CO2 cover also reduces the diffusion and reflection of solar radiations back to the atmosphere. This means the solar / heat radiations would remain intact in the region. This would cause moderate climatic temperature. In other words, would make the temperature level of cold regions rise above the normal temperature range. This would cause melting of galciours, concentration of rains in northern part etc.
All above means the whole scenario of climate is going to alter. This would really go worsen and would cause huge loss.
Its time to rethink all the situation and push the policy makers to do something. Otehrwise we are going to ruine.
Unlike most Americans, I live in a place for the world (in)famous for low-lying position – ergo the effects of climate change are felt here to much greater extent. I wonder how folks can deny Global Warming when I see it everyday in its changing weather patterns. I haven’t skated on natural ice since I was a ten-year-old. The last time we had a good pack of snow(yes it can snow here as well!) was two years back. Whereas we used to have long and reasonably warm summers(23 degrees Celsius or so) now it just rains all the time, and it is chilly. The autumns and winters are more extreme – very chilly(drop down to 15 degrees below zero) or very very mild. The hottest time of the year is now May and it is over very fast. On the whole it rains much more. I’ve talked to a few exchange students from Sweden, and according to them they now even have warm summers in Stockholm, a recent phenomenon. I don’t see the need for further hard evidence, anyone can look at the sky and see the proof for themselves(it is, in fact, raining right now).