Friends,
Last month, torrential rainfall and devastating floods hit the state of Uttarakhand. Bridgescollapsed and roads were destroyed, leaving tens of thousands stranded. More disturbing are the nearly 6,000 who have been presumed dead, while government officials admit that "we will never know the exact number of the dead." (1)
There is no doubt that these floods have shaken the country. Indians from a every walk of life, from celebrities to the average citizen, have been pouring relief into Uttarakhand. And there has been much debate as to what caused this devastation. Explanations like dams, poor infrastructure, and tourism have been discussed, but one issue has been noticeably missing from the national conversation: global warming.
The dams and poor infrastructure may have made the floods worse, but they don't explain the fact that monsoons came to Uttarakhand a month earlier this year or that the state received 847% excess rainfall between 13 June and 19 June.
These facts point to a climate that is rapidly changing, and we as a country need to have an honest discussion about all the reasons why this is happening. But this will never happen until global warming enters the mainstream dialogue. That's why we're calling on prominent figures to publicly acknowledge the connection between global warming and extreme weather in India.
As little as a tweet from them could get national media coverage. And if we get more of a response, we could transform the global warming conversation in India. Will you join us?
The hesitation to connect the Uttarakhand floods to global warming come from looking at it as an isolated event, but it is just one of the extreme weather events that has hit India this year. This past January, Maharashtra was battling its worst drought in 40 years. There were fears that even drinking water would become scarce!
The states of Assam and Andhra Pradesh have also been devastated by floods in the past month. In Andhra, 200 villages and 100,000 hectares of farm land were under water as of 22 July. In Assam, over one lakh people living in over 400 villages have been affected.
This is not normal! This is the result of man-made global warming and its impacts are hitting India hard. That's why we need to elevate this issue in the national dialogue so people everywhere are discussing it and pushing our Government to act.
Ask prominent public figures to take a stand on global warming today
We don't know when the next devastating extreme weather event will hit our country. India needs to have this conversation now.
Onwards,
Renuka, and the 350.org India team
Sources:
1) indianexpress.com/news/will-never-know-exact-death-toll-in-uttarakhand-floods-cm-bahuguna/1136067/
3) blog.orangehues.com/2013/07/nothing-natural-about-this-disaster.html
5) floodlist.com/asia/andhra-pradesh
6) zeenews.india.com/news/assam/assam-floods-affect-1-1-lakh-people-in-11-district_861340.html
Replies
This has been a good discussion with reasoning and counter causes. But what is missing is the point of degrading and depleting of the forests, which worked as carbon sinks as well as climate shock absorbents. The satellite imageries show it, how we have lost the forest cover in the name of development or due to biotic pressure. this has also contributed to global warming, unpredictable climate and erratic rains.
Hello!
It has been quite interesting to check the reasons and counter reasons. However, climate change or climate shift as it may be aptly termed has been accelerated by anthropogenic activities, which has been established by scientists, academicians, industries as well as governments. There are a series of videos by NASA too establishing that though the climate cycle is natural, there are strong indication that since the industrial revolution and growing population, our climate is the first victim. The safe limit of carbon dioxide has been also discussed and debated to be 300-325 ppm as earlier propagated at 350 ppm. Nevertheless, whatever may have caused the Uttarakhand debacle, it was very spontaneous and not thought of in planning, design and management of structures. Image what would have happened, if the structures were not there and there was no destruction of the scale we now know, then the disaster would not have received such a widespread media and public response. However, it would have been still an event worth discussing. It is true that the data with climate change as well as cloud burst are not well established and though it has been claimed to be one of its kind since last few years, this is an annual feature. Nevertheless, we still have to look into the larger canvas and work towards a resilient community irrespective of warming or not
I am in agreement with that part concerning un-planned structures and un-controlled use of our resources. But attiributing these factors to global warming is probably to premature. Cloud Bursts do not have a fixed place and they can happen anywhere anytime and that the place received the highest rainfall this year due to cloud burst may nt witness the same next year and the place may shift elsewhere. Unfortunately we do not have the data to link global warming to human activities as our data collection is fairly young and also not well covered all over the globe to accurately predict the reasons for global warming. The related software that predicts the global warming phenomenon or the software that analyses the same is also not yet perfected. nature has its own ways and any amount of software prediction will not be able to control the nature. if it was so, we would have a total control on weather by now and we would have predicted weather much better than what we do now globally. There is no denying the fact that there is global warming but whether this warming is natural or man made is debated without any conclusive proof either ways. Earth's precession cycles, sun spot activities and various other factors attribute to global warming and whether the CO2 increase is due to increased global temperatures or increase of global temperatures due to increase in CO2 is also hotly debated and contested. We know that natural reasons such as large scale forest fires, volcanic activity, earth quakes release green house gases in such high quantities that man made carbon contribution is much smaller than what the nature pushes into the atmosphere. Unless, we can quantify the CO2 in the atmosphere due to mankind's activities and due to natural causes, we will never know who is the bigger culprit. But, again to defend CO2, mankind can not survive without CO2 in the air as our survival depends upon the vegtation which consumes CO2 and releases Oxygen for us to breathe. A prudent way of absorbing more CO2 is by planting more trees and stop the destruction of natural rain forests in South America and Far East Asia which are the largest carbon sinks that controlled global CO2 emissions.
I agree cloud bursting is known phenomenon in Uttarakhand, but not in the part where it happened in 2013. The man made structures, ill-planning made the situation worse, but they did not cause the cloud burst nor early advancement of monsoon in country.
Floods in Assam are getting severe each year, again man-made structures like dams make situation worse but do not justify heavy rainfall in a single day and no rain through out the month.
I agree the natural processed release different form of carbon in atmosphere, but sadly we still have no control over these activities and I firmly believe we should not even have control over them. However we have control over human activities which add carbon in atmosphere and we MUST act on them. We have reached a stage where can not say that human activities are not disturbing atmospheric balance. Currently the level of CO2 in atmosphere has reached 400ppm, which is caused majorly by human induced activities.
The Maharashtra drought was caused due to depleting ground water. The water from rivers and other sources was diverted to Coal power plants in the region. These power plants are water guzzlers and Carbon emitters. As a nation we are still fixed to these old age power plants and are not ready to invest in renewable sources of energy. Though the renewable energy sector is on rise in India but it is no where comparable to thermal capacity rise in country.
My point is that we must act to reduce our emission and look for alternatives to achieve our development goals.
T Raghavendra Rao said:
I am not sure if the argument about floods will authenticate extreme weather conditions in India. Sever flooding in Assam, Andhra Pradesh are a common event year after year and lakhs of people do get effected every year. Andhra Pradesh witnessed draught conditions for 5 years in the previous decade and Maharashtra's draught condition and lack of water for drinking is mostly attributed to ground water depletion due to excess consumption and un-controlled diversion of water to the industry. Cloud bursts in the Himalayan regions is also not a new phenomenon and such cloud bursts happened earlier also in this region and the Uttarakhand cloud burst and the ensuing flood is probably one more of those natural phenomenon. Probably the flood waters coursed through towns and villages this year due to un-planned, un-controlled construction within the natural water courses which were draining the water for millions of years un-obstructed. The events mentioned have been witnessed in India for many years and happened earlier also and these events do not really contribute to any compelling evidence of the effect of global warming in India. This year India had seen 17% excess rainfall this monsoon so far except n a very small area and that too in the North East, Bengal and Bihar. India had been witnessing slightly below par performance for a few years and this year's monsoon will wipe out the deficit and may help in the re-charging of aquifers. Are we getting alarmed very much due to the propaganda rather than on physical reality? I do not know, may be there are other factors other than man made conditions for the increase in global temperatures. Isn't it a fact that earth quakes release more Methane into atmosphere than the amount released otherwise? If there is a serious issue that will effect the weather more readily s the rampant use of microwave devices used in communications which effect the humidity and local temperature profiles. Has any one given a thought about this?