INDIA ATTACKS WESTERN CLIMATE ALARMISM
Financial Times, 24 July 2009
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/c2896b88-77bd-11de-9713-00144feabdc0.html
By James Lamont in New Delhi, Joshua Chaffin in Are and Fiona Harvey in London
Himalayas a key area of contention.
Excerpts:
A split between rich and poor nations in the run-up to climate-change talks widened on Thursday.
India rejected key scientific findings on global warming, while the European Union called for more action by developing states on greenhouse gas emissions.
Jairam Ramesh, the Indian environment minister, accused the developed world of needlessly raising alarm over melting Himalayan glaciers.
He dismissed scientists’ predictions that Himalayan glaciers might disappear within 40 years as a result of global warming.
“We have to get out of the preconceived notion, which is based on western media, and invest our scientific research and other capacities to study Himalayan atmosphere,” he said.
“Science has its limitation. You cannot substitute the knowledge that has been gained by the people living in cold deserts through everyday experience.”
Mr Ramesh was also clear that India would not take on targets to cut its emissions, even though developed countries are asking only for curbs in the growth of emissions, rather than absolute cuts.
…
India has taken the hardest line in the negotiations so far. Along with China, India refused at the meeting of the Group of Eight industrialised nations this month to sign up to a target of cutting global emissions by half by 2050. The countries were holding out to gain concessions from the west on financing.
The claims from Mr Ramesh that Western science was wrong on the question of melting Himalayan glaciers appeared to reinforce Delhi’s recalcitrant stance.
Mr Ramesh this week challenged Hillary Clinton, US secretary of state, over her appeal to India to embrace a low-carbon future and not repeat the mistakes of the developed world in seeking fast industrialisation.
…
Mr Ramesh said the rate of retreat of glaciers in the Himalayas varied from a “couple of centimetres a year to a couple of metres”, but that this was a natural process that had taken place occurred over the centuries. Some were, in fact, growing, he said.
The glaciers – estimated by India’s space agency to number about 15,000 – had also been affected by debris and the large number of tourists, he said.
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Smokey, there are already several bills working their way thru congress right now to “contribute” several billion dollars annually for climate mitigation and such, to other countries. Search Thomas for “climate” http://thomas.loc.gov/home/c111query.html
Speaking of India and climate:
Indian Girls Plow Fields Naked in Attempt to Bring Rain
Friday, July 24, 2009
Indian farmers — desperate for rain — have asked their unmarried daughters to plow dry fields naked, in a bid to spark interest from the weather gods, and bring some badly needed monsoon rain.
The nude girls in the eastern India state of Bihar chanted hymns as they plowed the fields, asking for rain, witnesses told Reuters.
“They (villagers) believe their acts would get the weather gods badly embarrassed, who in turn would ensure bumper crops by sending rains,” Upendra Kumar, a village council official, told Reuters.
“This is the most trusted social custom in the area and the villagers have vowed to continue this practice until it rains very heavily,” she told Reuters.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,534753,00.html?test=latestnews
Gore… the science is settled, Russians, Chinese, and Indian scientists have pulled back the curtain of fear mongering and obfuscation. The american scientists who went along to get along are the laughingstocks of real scientists worldwide… You did it to yourself by not addressing questions and inconsistencies in the global warming bugaboo… so shut up… pack your bags… go home and live on your ill gained millions…. better drop those vapor stocks now before you lose that money as you have your credibility….
Mike
OT, but worth noting:
Meanwhile, back on the sun, Cycle 23 WILL NOT DIE!
http://spaceweather.com
Also OT, but curious…
If the Daily Arctic Mean continues to stay below the historical avg, how is the artic sea ice still heading towards 2007 type record lows?
India will continue to use coal to meet its energy demands, says Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). “You cannot, in a democracy, ignore some of these realities and as it happens with the resources of coal that India has we really don’t have any choice but to use coal in the immediate short term,” he said. The Hindu, 22 July 2009
So would Clinton advise borrowing money from China – so that the USA could then pay China … not to do whatever it does, that might enable China to lend money to the US?
“Ants control ant-hill temperature strictly at 77°F.”…
Are we pursuing the ant-hill model for our society?
But it’s absolutely imperative that the US, a country with less than 1/3 the population of India, stop burning coal immediately.
SHEESH!
Talking of glaciers, this report on the BBC is very different to their usual output on climate:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8167209.stm
It won’t end there. After Obama-care, Global Warming will be the next big issue on the president’s agenda, and he will speak to it directly and forcefully, just as he did nationally on health care. His third-world Harrier-in-Chief is Hillary Clinton, and she will not rest till she has drawn visible pollution / energy concessions from both India and China in order to legitimize those coerced from Americans under its cap-and-tax mandates.
Re: R. Pachauri’s interesting quote,
So Rajendra Pauchauri Is he an apologist for third-world coal use?
It’s a strange world we live in. We send Hillary the Harrier over there to make us look better. They send Rajendra the poached-eyed potentate over here…
Curiouser and curiouser!
I still like the story about Russia biasing the Siberian temperatures to the “high” side,and passing them on to NOAA & GISS. Then the US will pass the Cap & Trade bill, and go farther into debt. Sort of like what Reagan did to Russia back when. Only the KGB could pull off something like that. Wonder what Eastern leader was in the KGB?
Sunita (08:52:58) :
“What India must learn though is to continously strive to achieve a sustainable growth and protect and respect its natural resources – Himalayan glaciers included”
Shouldn’t we all. However, this has nothing to do with CO2. India has been sustaining themselves and living with their glaciers, etc for more than 5 millenia – I don’t think they are planning to stop. An unspoken subtext here (the crack about tourists fouling the glaciers was thrown in in case the reader didn’t know there was a subtext) is that Indians don’t need any more superior advice from old masters about how they should respect their natural resources and how they should conduct themselves. The ever so well-meaning philanthropic agencies, the UN, NGOs and bleeding hearts who come up with such unconscionable insults like “give a man a fish and he will eat for a day; teach him how to fish and he can feed himself forever” seem totally unaware that this is the most egregiously paternal and racist nonsense ever heard of. I worked for several years with the Geological Survey of Nigeria and a Nigerian geologist told me that the European (which includes N. Americans) can’t seem to understand why we take aid with one hand and slap them on the cheek with the other. I knew exactly what he meant.
Jairam Ramesh should instead read the work of V. Ramanathan about regional and global dimming, instead.
The Ramanathan team clearly shows that more than half of Himalayan warming is caused not by carbon dioxide, but from dark soot from coal plants, diesel engines and specially by rural biomass burning and wildfires.
This is India (and China) personal greenhouse. India will pay a big price for ignoring global and regional climate change. When the monsoon will collapse and the glaciers end melting, guess who will pay: not the politicians and businesssmen , but the poor people send in the Dimming Path of pollution and drought.
PD1: Ramanathan is an indian researcher, who analyses the asian “Atmospheric Brown Clouds (ABCs)”, a three kilometer thick layer of pollution ( black carbon and sulfate aerosols) over southern Asia.
PD2: Don`t make confusion. The Himalayan and Hindukush glaciers ARE melting at record speeds. The ones that are growing are the Karakoram ones , probably because of a local microclimate pattern.
I’m curious to know how glaciers are impacted by “tourist warming”. I was a trekker in Western Nepal one summer, and would be mortified to think I had left my carbon footprint around those otherwise pristine white Annapurnas.
Meant to follow the official tourist guide-book motto:
“Take only photographs; leave only dollars.”
My head is bowed to the wise Indians. In the end they will be proven right. How dare Hillary Clinton tell them what to do – just who do we (I’m referring to our socialist regime here) think we are!
How ironic that in 10 to 20 years, Indians will face frustration when they call their bank about their credit card, only to be transferred to a darned New York call center… Thats if they even have power…
. Nogw (08:48:18) :
“Beware first world ex-rich countries, your green madness will force us, third world “poor” (and working hard) countries stop buying your debt.”
Please, please tell the US Congress that. They seem to think being voted into office means someone just handed them a blank checkbook with an unlimited overdraft and they do not have to pay it back. Of course most of them are lawyers so the do not understand what the word “work” actually means, and that includes the ??? in the white house.
I have trouble believing the madness taking place in that mid-Atlantic seaboard swampland. Could it be a symptom of breathing too much swamp gas?
Nogw (11:21:26) :
India & China probably have records we know nothing about. They didn’t last 1000’s of years because they laid out all their cards on the table.
So, what’s up with the West taking a hammer to it’s kneecaps?
The argument that Cap&Trade is in our national security interests is 180 out.
It’s never in a nation’s best interest to cripple itself from resources.
A test for the British at heart –
These are actual comments from Real Climate, except for one that I made up. Can you guess which one it is?
“All these trends are just so pesky. After all the shouting, the data just keeps on heading in the wrong direction for us all, regardless of whether we’ve got feet anchored to the ground or dancing on moonbeams. That’s why we see a multitude of painfully contorted attempts to undermine trends, each and every one.”
“Something nominally alive appears to have broken loose in the Arctic, perhaps from the bottom of the sea floor, or maybe from the bottom of the ice itself. It might also just be a floating mat of something that is normally afloat, but my experience with mats like this is they tend to break free of a substrate of some kind and then float as a unit until something (usually the wind) disrupts them. While the goo itself doesn’t appear to pose a problem (I’d not want to get any on my clothes, by the looks of it) the very fact of it existing at all in this location has people stumped.”
“With all the hot air about cow flatulence and methane, how can we really be sure whether caps on CO2 will help global warming? So many factors…it makes my head hurt.”
“Why…ignoring…..predictions…don’t factor…black carbon…factored in—and if so, how…accurate predictions…change over a year…energy mix…foreseeable future—…habits…not precisely known [or nearly so]…future… models… predict…possibly be taken seriously…not telling…black carbon…disrupting…damaged economies…CO2… emissions trading schemes —schemes…unemployment, inflation…income…disruption…dislocation…harm…country…Obama …defer…exhort…black carbon…mitigation…economy-destroying CO2 emissions legislation…AGW side…desperate…focus on CO2?”
“That was one of the best articles I’ve read here. Thank you. It will be interesting to see this tested in the coming years, unless some other unknown factor confuses us.”
🙂
Re: Sending Billions overseas to buy complicity in warming madness….
How many Americans voted in this last election, thinking they were just choosing a guy who sounded smart and had a nice smile? How many thought he was just another figurehead administrator of a political machine that never changed anything in more than a nuisance fashion? Little did they know their choice might ultimately bankrupt this country. But the evidence was right there in his promises.
I’m going off the grid.
How come Western citizens take such a sympathetic approach while Western governments try to stuff expensive green technology down our throat? Is it because you, private citizens, do not have the agenda of selling technology?
But the fact remains that Himalayan glaciers are shrinking at an alarming rate. In Garhwal Himalayas (I am an avid trekker), I have seen that happen to about 10 glaciers myself. And the fact that local mountain guides are left scratching their head every summer, seeing how far the glacial snout has retreated.
The way out? It’s anybody’s guess!!
Why do most of the comments refer to keeping the third world countries poor by making them enforce CO2 limits, when in fact the real premise behind AGW is to move Western prosperity to the third world and even out the world’s standard of living through a socialist world (UN) government?
I’m not sure exactly how the US election system works, but I believe in less than a year and a half the US electorate will be able to demonstrate how they feel about AGW and it’s consequences. Only if radical haven’t taken place, or been announced by then will the incumbent party have a chance of saving elected representatives!
I’m with Mr. Ramesh. With millions of my people living below the poverty line, I’ll only be happy for them to be able to earn a respectable livelihood instead of having them bear witness to Himalayan glaciers still intact. To Hillary: I’m not gonna let my government spend an extra penny to cut down on the emissions of your country.
At least I’m saying no to your face.
Bill P (16:23:05) :
The impact of tourism on glaciers is only an impact on tourist themselves, if improperly managed. That means garbage and drinking water pollution will affect other humans. If properly managed: nothing. Actually better than nothing, because it will improve the living condition of other humans (does Swiss tourism is a valid example?)
The impact on the glacier itself is negligible, the effect on retreat and mass balance is a zero-point-followed by as many zeroes as you please. Saying otherwise is just a case of eco-misanthropy mixed with delusions of an anthropocentric universe.
Another case of eco-misanthropy is that while there are pollutants that affect human health in a proven way, all the effort to combat their emissions is diverted to the innocuous CO2.
How many people find it really humorous that cows are revered in India? Loads, right? If you, for a moment, really look at the rationale of of not eating (or mass breeding) cows, it’s not that funny. India is a really old (ancient) and very wise civilization. One might laugh at some absurd customs (like curiousgeorge some comments above), but don’t disregard the wisdom built over millenniums.
Hillary Clinton says that India should not repeat the mistakes of the West. It might seem a chauvinist statement with regard to the context she said it in. But we DO sincerely need to learn from these mistakes, and not with respect to carbon emissions but immensely irrational lifestyles. Our ecological murdering lifestyles of the modern, dare I say, Western is the biggest threat to the planet.
And don’t forget, poverty is a much greater pollutant than carbon.
PS : Withe respect to curiosgeorge’s comment above, Indians find it just as funny that ‘Evolution’ is a national debate in the USA.