"Kenya: Biodiversity fades as coral bleaches"

From Africa-News.net

Synonymous with big game and rolling savannahs, Kenya has also garnered fame for a part of its natural heritage that is found off shore, in the form of coral reefs. But, officials warn that higher sea temperatures -- ascribed to climate change -- are taking a toll on these reefs, as well as the diverse marine life they play host to.

"Climate change may not have sunk in with the common man or woman, but everyone realises the transformation that is taking place in the water. Fish are disappearing. Coral reefs, which are like the rainforest of the sea, have been seriously affected," said Ali Mohammed, deputy director of Coastal and Marine Programmes at the National Environment Management Authority.

"It is the industrialised world that needs to minimise its emission of greenhouse gases. Africa's contribution to climate change is insignificant, yet it is greatly affected (by this change)," he told IPS, in reference to gases such as carbon dioxide and methane which enter the atmosphere partly through the burning of fossil fuels.

These emissions absorb and trap the sun's energy. Many scientists argue that higher concentrations of greenhouse gases are prompting a rise in the earth's temperature -- which in turn is leading to climate change.

Under normal circumstances, reefs are sustained by the algae they contain: these miniscule creatures use sunlight and carbon dioxide from coral to produce substances rich in energy that feed the coral and other marine life forms.

But, higher sea temperatures disrupt this symbiosis. They cause the algae, which also give reefs colour, to be expelled -- leading to bleached coral that cannot produce energy, and which often starves as a result.

The destructive potential of widespread algae loss was illustrated in 1998, when a severe instance of the El Niño weather pattern caused 80 percent of Kenya's reefs to be affected by bleaching, according to Mohammed.

The name El Niño -- Spanish for "Christ child" -- was given to the pattern because it tends to occur near Christmas. El Niño are linked to changing temperatures in the waters of the Pacific that acutely affect the climate in other parts of the world, such as increasing the temperature of Kenyan waters to some of their highest levels ever. While there are indications that El Niño have been taking place for many years, scientists are said to be investigating whether global warming has sparked an increased incidence or intensity of this phenomenon.

Over 90 percent of reefs in certain Kenyan waters died in the 1998 El Niño, prompting knock-on casualties amongst various species of fish as their environment became compromised.

This loss of biological diversity was ultimately felt by Kenyans when the reduced number of fish translated into lower catches for coastal communities -- some 70 percent of which rely extensively on fishing for their livelihood, says the U.S-based Wildlife Conservation Society.

As Mohammed describes it, these communities didn't have the resources to escape their changed circumstances: "The Kenyan marine fisheries are dominated by small scale (fishermen) with limited capacity to fish. They have no means to go beyond the mangroves and corals, and cannot venture into the open seas where there are more fish."

He claims the losses sustained by fisheries were significant, but could not give figures in this regard. Remarks by Tanzanian fisherman Rajab Mohammed Sosele indicate that coastal communities in East Africa continue to feel the brunt of rising sea temperatures.

"The reduction in fish catch has seriously affected my business. While…supply is going down, the price of fish goes up. The people I usually sell fish to cannot afford these high prices, so these circumstances are making it increasingly difficult for me to make a living," he is quoted as saying, in a 2006 publication of the WorldWide Fund for Nature that highlights how people in East Africa are experiencing climate change.

The destruction of reefs is also a threat to marine-based tourism in Kenya, which accounts for more than two-thirds of the sector as a whole, according to government figures. "Most of the tourists come because of the beauty and diversity of our marine life," said Mohammed.

Tourism is Kenya's second-largest foreign income earner after agriculture. The effects of climate change on biodiversity will be coming to the fore Tuesday during the International Day for Biological Diversity, which is focusing on this issue...

Tom Coburn Blocked Bill to Honor Rachal Carson

By David A. Fahrenthold at The Washington Post

Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn has effectively blocked a resolution to honor environmental author Rachel Carson on the 100th anniversary of her birth, saying that her warnings about environmental damage have put a stigma on potentially lifesaving pesticides, congressional staffers said yesterday.

Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin (D-Md.) had intended to submit a resolution celebrating Carson, author of the 1962 book "Silent Spring," for her "legacy of scientific rigor coupled with poetic sensibility." Carson, a longtime resident of Silver Spring who died in 1964, would have turned 100 this Sunday.

But Cardin has delayed the legislation, a spokeswoman said, because Coburn (R) has signaled that he will use Senate rules to halt it...

In a statement on his Web site yesterday, Coburn (R) confirmed that he is holding up the bill. In the statement, he blames Carson for using "junk science" to turn public opinion against chemicals, including DDT, that could prevent the spread of insect-borne diseases such as malaria, which is spread by mosquitoes...

Carson's book, which begins with a scene of a town in which all of nature is silenced by pollution, examines the effects that industrial-age chemicals were having on human and animal health. She focuses particularly on the effects that DDT, a pesticide used to kill mosquitoes and other insects, appeared to be having on the reproduction of birds.

Her book is credited with inspiring the formation of the Environmental Protection Agency in 1970 and the banning of most uses of DDT in the United States in 1972. Since her death from cancer, she has come to be celebrated as a hero by the environmental movement and as the inspiration for the modern, aggressive strain of advocacy for nature...

Algal bloom leaves towns high and dry in Australia

by Leo Shanahan at theAge.com (Australia)

A toxic algal bloom has forced authorities to cut normal water supplies to towns along Victoria's Great Ocean Road, leaving locals reliant on daily deliveries by water trucks.

The latest outbreak comes as the head of a major regional water operator said he expected an increase in the number of blue-green algal blooms and follows an outbreak at Werribee South last month that affected farmers using recycled water to grow their crops.

At a cost of about $3000 a day to regional water supplier Barwon Water, 20 trucks a day are delivering water from Anglesea Reservoir to about 1400 Aireys Inlet and Fairhaven residents.

The algae, which has made the water unsafe to drink, was detected last Wednesday and has forced Barwon Water to shut down all supply from the Pan Reservoir that supplied the towns.

If consumed, blue-green algae can cause skin irritations, allergic reactions and nausea.

Barwon Water chairman Stephen Vaughan told theage.com.au the bloom was caused by a combination of warmer temperatures, prolonged drought and recent rain.

"It's mostly related to temperature and the unseasonably warm May," he said.

"It also occurs when reservoir levels are lower rather than fuller, and the third thing is the little bit of rain we had two weeks ago probably washed nutrients from the into the reservoir and then you get phosphorus and nitrogen ... that's enough to kick it off."

...Mr Vaughan said that while such outbreaks were likely to happen once every four to five years he warned that with warmer temperatures and drought, such algal blooms would be more common in all water supplies...

Butterflies in Britain - 7 Weeks Early

By Caroline Davies at The Telegraph(uk)

Britain's butterflies are emerging earlier than ever with at least 14 species so far breaking all known records - some of them by astonishing margins - due to climate change.

Lepidopterists have been delighting in early shows due to a warm spring, but conservationists warn the effect on Britain's food chain is as yet unknown and must be monitored.

There are fears the birds and animals that feed on them may be knocked out of synchronisation.

The Lulworth skipper, which normally does not emerge until the 3rd week in June, was this year sighted on April 28 in Dorset - a record-breaking seven weeks early. The speckled wood was also seven weeks premature, usually emerging at the end of March, but this year was seen in Cornwall as early as January 16.

The wall brown, chalkhill blue and green hairstreak, have all been spotted six weeks earlier than usual. The Glanville fritillary, meanwhile, emerged five weeks before it would normally appear during the 3rd week of May.

Those appearing a month early include the large skipper, the small blue and the meadow brown.

But, said Dr Martin Warren, chief executive of Butterfly Conservation, the warmer spring months are doing little to combat the decline of butterflies, with 70 percent of our 59 resident and regular migrant species suffering from loss of habitat.

"It is quite extraordinary how many species are coming out early, some of them at their earliest ever sighting," he said. "I spotted the Lulworth skipper myself and took a photograph just in case no-one believed me."

"I think what it means is yet more confirmation that climate change is having a big impact on wildlife in Britain.

"Insects are a good indicator because they rely on temperature for their activity. And three-quarters of our species are insects. If butterflies are doing things much earlier then it shows that climate change is really having a big impact on the whole life cycle...

"U.S. bids to stop G8 push for climate deal"

By Jeremy Lovell (Reuters)

LONDON - The United States is battling to stop next month's Group of Eight summit in Germany from pushing for urgent talks on a new deal to fight global warming after the Kyoto Protocol lapses in 2012.

In a draft of the final communique for the June 6-8 summit seen by Reuters, Washington wants references taken out to the urgency of the climate crisis and the need for a U.N. conference in Bali in December to open talks on a new global deal.

According to the draft, the United States supports the deletion of the following paragraphs: "We firmly agree that resolute and concerted international action is urgently needed in order to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions and sustain our common basis of living."

"To this end we will, in the face of the U.N. Climate Change Conference at the end of this year, send a clear message on the further development of the international regime to combat climate change."

Environment ministers are due to meet on the Indonesian island of Bali on December 3-14. Britain and Germany are pushing for an agreement to kick-start talks on a successor treaty to Kyoto, extending and expanding its scope and membership.

Instead, the United States wants the final G8 statement to say: "Addressing climate change is a long-term issue that will require global participation and a diversity of approaches to take into account differing circumstances."

The deletions are part of a concerted effort by the United States, which rejected Kyoto in 2001 and has ever since tried to undermine it, to water down the tone and content of the G8 summit declaration.

Most references in the draft, dated April, 2007, to targets and timetables to cut climate warming carbon emissions have met with objections from Washington.

It objects to efforts by G8 president Germany to get rich nations to agree to cut energy consumption by 20 percent by 2020 and raise energy efficiency in transport and power generation by the same amount over the same period.

It also objects to a call for actions to limit the rise in global temperatures to two degree Celsius this century and to cut carbon emissions by 50 percent below 1990 levels by 2050...

"Carvings may rewrite history of Chinese characters"

Chinese archaeologists say they have found more than 2,000 pictographs dating back 7,000 to 8,000 years, about 3,000 years before other texts that are believed to be the origin of modern Chinese characters.

The pictographs are on the rock carvings in Damaidi, at Beishan Mountain in northwest China's Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, which covers about 450 square kilometers with more than 10,000 prehistoric rock carvings.

Paleographers claim that the pictographs may take the history of Chinese characters back to 7,000 to 8,000 years ago.

Previously, scholars believed the earliest Chinese characters included 3,000-year-old inscriptions on bones and tortoise shells, known as the Oracle Bones, and 4,500-year-old pottery-born inscriptions, both found in central Henan Province, one of the birthplaces of Chinese civilization.

"We have found some symbols shaped like both pictures and characters," said Li Xiangshi, a cliff carving expert at the North University of Nationalities based in Yinchuan, capital of Ningxia.

"The pictographs are similar to the ancient hieroglyphs of Chinese characters and many can be identified as ancient characters," said Li.

The Damaidi carvings, first discovered in the late 1980s, cover15 square kilometers with 3,172 cliff carvings, featuring 8,453 individual figures such as the sun, moon, stars, gods and scenes of hunting or grazing.

"Through arduous research, we have found that some pictographs are commonly seen in up to hundreds of pictures in the carvings," said Liu Jingyun, an expert on ancient Oracle Bone characters.

"The size, shape and meanings of the pictographs in different carvings are the same," Liu said.

Liu believed the meanings of all the pictographs could be deciphered on the basis of certain classifications such as gender.

Oxygen supplies for India police

Police stations across the Indian city of Calcutta have been equipped with oxygen devices to enable police to offset the effects of pollution.

The extra air is for the benefit of hundreds of traffic policemen in the city who have to brave some of the worst pollution in the world.

The move follows a recent report which said that some 70% of people in the city suffer from respiratory disorders.

It said that traffic police were among the worst hit by poor air quality.

Ailments include lung cancer, breathing difficulties and asthma, the Chittaranjan National Cancer Institute (CNCI) study said.

The CNCI is one of India's foremost research bodies, and its investigation - published earlier this month - took six years to complete.

One of its key findings was a direct link between air pollution among the 18 million people of Calcutta and the high incidence of lung cancer.

Calcutta tops all Indian cities when it comes to lung cancer - at 18.4 cases per 100,000 people - far ahead of Delhi at 13.34 cases per 100,000.

But now the city's 11 traffic offices, where policemen report for duty, have been equipped with oxygen concentrators that are normally used for patients in hospitals.

Calcutta's traffic police chief, Javed Shamim, says his men have the facilities to take oxygen for at least 20 minutes after doing an eight hour shift amid the dust and smoke of the city.

(Auto rickshaws are one of the worst pollution offenders)

However doctors caution that taking in oxygen may not help the policemen because many of the pollutants are too deeply lodged in their lungs.

Only 10% of Calcutta's 1.5m vehicles have converted to green fuels - and only 20% of those have taken an emission test in the last two years.

Environmentalist Subhas Dutta filed a public interest litigation in the Calcutta High Court in March this year, alleging that the West Bengal government was doing nothing to control air pollution levels.

The court ordered the government to reduce vehicle emissions.

"This is a killer but the government is doing nothing to check it," alleged Mr Dutta.

Arctic islands invite tourists to see climate woes

LONGYEARBYEN - A remote chain of Arctic islands is advertising itself as a showcase of bad things to come from global warming.

Visitors to Svalbard can see reindeer, seals or polar bears in the Arctic, where U.N. scientists say warming is happening twice as fast as on the rest of the planet in what may be a portent of changes further south.

Local authorities said such visits are less environmentally harmful than Russian-led tours on nuclear ice-breakers or sky-diving trips over the North Pole.

"This is one of the few ecosystems we have in the world that is functioning, with the polar bear as the top predator," said Rune Bergstrom, environmental expert at the governor's office.

"Svalbard is probably the best place to see change, and the easiest place to reach in the high Arctic," he said.

Glaciers have been retreating in parts of the Norwegian-run archipelago, Europe's largest wilderness. Last summer, some previously unknown islands were found after a glacier shrank...

"Svalbard is an important meeting place...You clearly see the melting of the ice, problems for polar bears, for birds, which are damaged by global warming and environmental pollutants," Norwegian Environment Minister Helen Bjoernoy told Reuters.

Antarctic News

NASA finds evidence of widespread Antarctic melting

Rising temperatures two years ago led to widespread melting of snow cover in west Antarctica, according to scientists examining the impact of global warming on the icy continent.

The melting of snow cover in regions in January 2005 was the most significant Antarctic melting seen since satellites began observing the continent three decades ago, NASA said Tuesday.

NASA's QuikScat satellite detected extensive areas of snowmelt, shown in yellow and red, in west Antarctica in January 2005.
(NASA/JPL)
It was also the first major melting detected using NASA's QuikScat satellite, which can measure both accumulated snowfall and temperatures in various regions.

The team of scientists found evidence of melting in regions not normally affected: up to 900 kilometres inland from the open ocean, farther than 85 degrees south (within 500 kilometres of the South Pole) and higher than 2,000 metres above sea level.

Deep Antarctic waters reveal hundreds of new species

Researchers have found more than 700 previously unknown creatures including carnivorous sponges, free-swimming worms, crustaceans and molluscs in the cold, dark water around Antarctica.

The Weddell Sea has long been thought of as a featureless abyss, devoid of life. But Angelika Brandt, of the zoological institute at the University of Hamburg, who led the expedition aboard the research vessel Polarstern, said the area could potentially be "the cradle of life of the global marine species". She said: "Our research results challenge suggestions that the deep sea diversity in the Southern Ocean is poor. We now have a better understanding in the evolution of the marine species and how they can adapt to changes in climate and environments."

Katrin Linse, of the British Antarctic Survey, who also took part in the expedition, said: "It was a big surprise to discover so many new species because many of us on that expedition had already worked for years in the Antarctic shallow waters.
"The general pattern is that life decreases if you go to the deep sea because you have less food and less light. Actually we have found the opposite pattern."

She said that the most significant result of the trawls, made between 700 metres and 6.5km below the surface, had been the discovery of hundreds of new species of isopods - crustaceans distantly related to woodlice. "We had 371 species known from the Antarctic before the expedition from the trawls taken in shallow waters. From the 50 trawls taken in the deep water, we added another 585 new species."

Other highlights of the three Polarstern expeditions, published today in Nature, included sea spiders that were the size of dinner plates and a 40cm deep-sea octopus. "When you looked at it, it looked back at you, so it was interacting. Octopuses are quite intelligent animals," said Dr Linse.

"Birds Dropping From Sky"

Birds Dropping From Sky, Flying Into Buildings After Exposure To Smoke

Vets: Toxins In Smoke Are Poisonous To Birds

Hundreds of birds from as far south as Miami are falling from the sky or flying head-first into buildings and dying after being exposed to smoke from wildfires blanketing parts of Florida, according to a report.

Veterinarians said the birds have very sensitive lungs and the toxins in the smoke are poison to them, Local 6 reported Monday.

Video showed birds slamming head-first into buildings and glass in Broward and Miami-Dade counties.

"I hear them (hitting glass) all day long," a business owner said. "It is horrible."

Residents in the counties have called wildlife centers to report the dead birds, the report said.

The birds are dying from either the impact of the crash or suffering from head and neck injuries.

Wildfires started about a month ago in southeast Georgia and have spread into Florida. More than 300,000 acres have burned in both states.

The wildfire that raced through the Okefenokee Swamp in southeast Georgia and into Florida was started by lightning more than a week ago.

By Sunday night, it had burned 102,500 acres in Florida and was 30 percent contained. Georgia reported 41 wildfires in the state covering 267,136 acres.

Officials were also fighting a series of other, smaller fires throughout the state.

The fire burning in southeast Georgia and Florida started May 5 in the middle of the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge. It took just six days to grow larger than another wildfire that has burned nearly 121,000 acres of Georgia forest and swampland over more than three weeks. The smaller fire was started by a tree falling on a power line.

The Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge and Georgia's Steven C. Foster State Park inside it remained closed.

Birds 'starve' at S Korea wetland

From the BBC:

Tens of thousands of migratory birds are facing starvation in South Korea, the UK-based Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) says.

The group says a land reclamation project has destroyed key wetlands used by the birds on their way from Asia to their breeding grounds in the Arctic.

Without the food at the Saemangeum wetlands, on the east coast, many of the birds will not survive the journey.

Two endangered species of wading bird face extinction because of the changes.

There are believed to be fewer than 1,000 mature spoonbilled sandpipers and Nordmann's greenshanks left in the wild.

The RSPB and other wildlife and conservation groups are highlighting the environmental problems at Saemangeum to mark World Migratory Birds Day.

Saemangeum was once an estuarine tidal flat on South Korea's Yellow Sea coast.

It was an important feeding ground for about 400,000 migrating birds making their way on a 24,000km round-trip between Asia and Alaska and Russia.

But 15 years ago, the government revealed plans for the world's biggest land reclamation project in order to drain the estuary and create fertile paddy fields.

After a succession of legal challenges from conservationists, the 33km sea wall was finally closed a year ago.

Since then, according to the RSPB, the vast wetlands have been replaced by parched earth, shellfish beds and plants have been destroyed, and thousands of birds are starving as a result.

"What we've lost here is one of the jewels in the crown of wetland habitats," Sarah Dawkins, who is monitoring the impact of the sea wall on birds, told the BBC.

"The Yellow Sea is an amazingly important stopover point for birds travelling up from places like New Zealand and Australia to their breeding grounds in the Arctic."

"And Saemangeum was one of the most important areas in the Yellow Sea."

Ms Dawkins said the birds relied on the tidal flats at Saemangeum as somewhere where they could land and "refuel" after a nine-day flight from New Zealand.

"It's a bit like losing a motorway service station and then your car running out of petrol," she explained.

Despite the damage, Ms Dawkins said there was still hope for the wetlands if the two sluice gates built into the sea wall were opened.

"That would restore a few thousand hectares of estuary system within Saemangeum and that would be at least something to help the birds," she said.

"The birds are still here. They're still coming."

"I think we really do need to still try to save some of their habitat."

Ms Dawkins also said it was critically important to mount a global effort to safeguard other estuaries around Saemangeum, one of which the government is planning to reclaim.

Acidic Oceans

From the Daily Green:

Carbon dioxide emissions could shake “the biological underpinnings of civilization” as increasingly acidic water undermines the oceanic food web, according to fresh research from the Pacific Ocean off Alaska.

The research shows that increasingly acidic Pacific water will affect king crabs and a snail that is a favorite food of Pacific salmon. How disruptions in the ocean food web could ultimately harm these and other popular food species is still uncertain.

The Senate Subcommittee on Oceans, Atmosphere, Fisheries, and Coast Guard will hear testimony today on the acidification of oceans from private, government and environmental group scientists.

Oceans had until recently been viewed as a great savior of the climate, because they have absorbed about one third of the carbon humans have emitted, buffering what would otherwise have been a greater warming of the atmosphere. But scientists have in recent years begun studying the consequences of oceanic carbon storage - a 25 percent increase in acidity since pre-industrial times.

The scientific endeavor is still young, with many unanswered questions. But results have shifted from showing that the ocean has grown more acidic to showing how that acidification is affecting ocean life, including species important for human food.

“We’re starting to see now a real connection to fisheries,” said Christopher Sabine, a National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration scientist involved in the North American Carbon Project’s effort to understand the role of carbon in the oceans...

Also from the Associated Press:

An algae bloom in Southern California coastal waters has produced record levels of a toxic acid, scientists reported Wednesday. The chemical has been blamed in the deaths of numerous marine mammals and seabirds in recent months.

Measurements from four coastal stations last month found the highest domoic acid concentrations at 27 micrograms per liter, said David Caron of the University of Southern California.

"I have never seen these kind of numbers before," Caron said.
Last year, the highest levels stood at 12 micrograms per liter.

Recent measurements taken this month found the toxin levels had substantially declined, suggesting the seasonal algae bloom may have peaked, Caron said.

--- The article goes on to suggest that the toxic acid is "natural" - as if pollution and all of the CO2 that the oceans are absorbing is "natural". But then the article continues:

"NOAA Fisheries, the federal agency that oversees ocean fishing, has deemed the recent deaths of common dolphins and whales in California an "unusual mortality event." This would allow the agency to pour resources into determining what was causing the die-off.

"Sowing the Substance of Life"

An editorial from New York Times:

Living where we do, it can be hard to tell how ordinary our Sun is, shining dimly in our ordinary galaxy. Then comes something to remind us. This time it is a colossal supernova, called SN 2006gy, the brightest ever recorded. A supernova is an exploding star. This one, first observed last September, lies about 240 million light-years from us in the constellation Perseus. The explosion was perhaps 100 times more powerful than an ordinary supernova, and the star that exploded may have been 150 times the Sun’s mass, “freakishly massive,” as one astronomer put it. A photograph of SN 2006gy shows that it vastly outshines the entire galaxy in which it is located. This takes some imagining.

But so does the nature of the explosion itself, which puzzled observers at first. The usual explanations could not account for a supernova on this scale, nor was this the predictable demise of such a massive star. Instead, this anomalous explosion seems to offer a glimpse into one of the essential conditions for the universe we observe — the dispersal of heavy elements like carbon and iron. What we are witnessing in SN 2006gy may be the making of the very atomic stuff out of which we ourselves are made. We are used to the notion that looking at the stars means looking back in time. Looking at SN 2006gy may mean looking at one of the fundamental processes in a much earlier universe.

Astronomers point to an analogous star in our own galaxy, Eta Carinae, about 7,500 light-years away. It is similar in size, and similar in instability, to the star that turned, dying, into SN 2006gy. There is a possibility that Eta Carinae may itself die a similar, extraordinary death. It is perhaps unwise to hope for grand celestial events in one’s lifetime. Stunning discoveries from the past should be enough. But it is tempting to wonder what such a nearby supernova, on such a scale, would be like, how it would be to live under such an altered sky.

"Scientists compile 'book of life'"

From the BBC:

The Encyclopedia of Life project aims to detail all 1.8 million known plant and animal species in a net archive.

Individual species pages will include photographs, video, sound and maps, collected and written by experts.

The archive, to be built over 10 years, could help conservation efforts as well as being a useful tool for education.

"The Encyclopedia of Life will provide valuable biodiversity and conservation information to anyone, anywhere, at any time," said Dr James Edwards, executive director of the $100m (£50m) project.

"[It] will ultimately make high-quality, well-organized information available on an unprecedented level."

The vast database will initially concentrate on animals, plants and fungi with microbes to follow. Fossil species may eventually be added.

To begin with, information will be harvested from existing databases, such as FishBase which already contains details of 29,900 species....

It could eventually fill with many more species than the original 1.8 million known today. Biologists estimate that there could be anywhere between five and 100 million species on the planet.

"Melting glaciers: Flood of troubles"

From the Times of India:

It's not just the Gangotri glacier that is receding. Actually, thousands of Himalayan glaciers are shrivelling up in varying degrees. The Pindari glacier is receding by 23 metres a year, Bara Shigri by 36 metres a year, Dokriani by 18 metres, Meola by 35 metres, Sonapani by 17 metres, Milam by 13 metres, Zemu by 28 metres - to name just a few.

Cumulatively, this melt could change the way we know our world. If global warming isn't arrested, rivers will first flood and then dry up; seas will rise and fertile lands will turn barren.

Until recently, such talk seemed the prattle of doomsayers. No longer. The devastating impact of melting snows, rising seas and drying rivers is virtually upon us. Within the lifetime of many of us, the Ganga could be a pale shadow of its current glory; shoreline cities and towns, including Mumbai, could be compelled to build dykes to keep out the invading seas; agricultural yield in the fecund Gangetic plains could become insufficient to feed our billion-plus population. That is, unless we act now.

Here's how the disaster scenario could pan out. As temperatures rise, glaciers will melt faster and receive less snowfall. Snowfall in the upper reaches of the glacier adds weight on top, and the pace of melt at its mouth creates a delicate balance, keeping the ice mass in place. When this balance is upset, the glacier either recedes or comes forward dramatically or simply bursts. Any which way, it's a calamity.

At one level, accelerated glacial melt will initially cause excess discharge of water in the rivers. A study has been done on the behaviour of 100 Himalayan rivers. As an illustration, let's take the Ganga. At Uttarkashi, the river level is expected to rise 20-30% within the first two decades and then gradually recede to 50% of its original level over the next decade, signaling that the river is drying up.

Glaciers cover nearly 38,000 sq km of the Himalayan mountains which, in turn, accounts for 800 cubic km of water flow annually. This nurtures the great Indian civilisation as we know it.

Rapid melt of this snow mass is expected to cause floods initially. But within two decades - by 2030, to be precise - when glaciers would have significantly melted, the situation is expected to reverse and several rivers will become a mere trickle.

The impact of this on agriculture is apparent - the lack of water will reduce arable land and that, in turn, will have an adverse affect on our food security.