The Hindu Business Line : Himalayan hopes

In recent days, there have been reports which have sparked hope in the hearts of those who would like to believe that climate change, after all, is not bearing down on human civilisation in a way which will leave the planet dry and arid, in short a dead planet. One study reportedly argues that the glaciers of the mighty Himalayas are holding their own in these so-called warming-up times, and that there really is nothing to worry about, certainly not to the extent that one should lose sleep. One glaciologist has reassured: “The Himalayan glaciers are melting — but there is nothing dramatic, nothing to suggest that they’ll vanish within decades”.

According to the reports, some time ago, the UN Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change had maintained that the Himalayan glaciers were receding faster than in any other part of the world and that, given the current trends, they could “disappear altogether by 2035, if not sooner”. This vision of the future of Himalayan glaciers has been sharply contested by some specialists, who have dismissed it as sheer “nonsense”, representing “organised propaganda by climate-change activists”. Strong words these, but they cannot be dismissed because of the data provided as the scientific back-up.

Reassuring news

Thus, referring to the Pindari glacier in Uttarkhand, one expert says that it has retreated about six metres annually between 1966 and 2007 compared with around 20 metres every year between 1906 and 1958. Another scientist found that the rate of retreat of the Siachen glacier was just 60 centimetres annually in place of the 7.5 metres “suggested by others”. For people in India, living along the great rivers flowing down from the Himalayas to the sea, this is reassuring news because what it essentially means is that the rivers will continue to flow as they have been doing since time immemorial, and will not be reduced to seasonal water channels as has been apprehended by the climate-watchers.

The scientific basis for the optimism is that the “glacial loss” occurring in other regions of the planet because of general warming cannot be extended to the Himalayan region because the latter is located at a much higher altitude (about 3,700 metres) than, say, the Alaskan region where the glaciers are almost at sea-level. The argument is that the environmental conditions are totally different in the two cases and that, therefore, both the trigger and the subsequent sequence of events are also unidentical.

Cataclysmic situation

The problem is: Should one feel relieved because of the reassurance provided by scientists about the rapid melting of the Himalayan glaciers? If yes, to what extent should this feeling of security be allowed to colour one’s view of the future of the planet which, by general agreement based on scientific observations, is heading towards the establishment of an environment which will not be friendly towards life, as we know it today? After all, the rivers fed by the Himalayan glaciers cannot continue to support human civilisation in a specific part of the planet beyond a point when, all around, there is a steady rise in the average temperature which must necessarily affect the normal weather cycles and food production.

The situation has in fact turned cataclysmic in some parts of the planet. In Antarctica, one of the largest glaciers there, namely, the Pine Island Glacier, is reportedly “thinning four times faster than thought of ten years ago”. The point of concern is that the glacier contains enough water to raise world sea levels by three centimetres. According to scientists, if this melting were to expose “the stationary ice behind it to warm seawater, and if that ice were to melt, it could raise sea levels by another 25 centimetres”. In the Arctic, US researchers have reportedly found evidence that faster melting “has crossed a tipping point from which there is no going back” and that, by perhaps 2030, the Arctic will be completely ice-free during the summer.

RANABIR RAY CHOUDHURY

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