Happy World Rivers Day - 29th September 2013!

IPCC Meeting to finalize Working Group I report starts

Government representatives and scientists opened a meeting of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) on Monday to finalize a report assessing the evidence for climate change and its causes.

The meeting, the culmination of four years’ work by hundreds of experts who have volunteered their time and expertise to produce a comprehensive assessment, will approve the Summary for Policymakers of the first part of the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report, subjecting it to line-by-line scrutiny. It will also accept the full report, which includes a Technical Summary, 14 chapters and several annexes, including, for the first time, an Atlas of Global and Regional Climate Projections.

This first part of the report, produced by the IPCC’s Working Group I, deals with the physical science basis of climate change. Further contributions, by IPCC Working Group II dealing with the impacts, adaptation and vulnerability relating to climate change, and by Working Group III assessing the mitigation of climate change, will be finalized in March and April 2014 respectively. The Fifth Assessment Report will be completed by a Synthesis Report in October 2014.

“The scientific evidence for anthropogenic climate change has strengthened year by year, leaving fewer uncertainties about the serious consequences of inaction, despite the fact that there remain knowledge gaps and uncertainties in some areas of climate science,” said Qin Dahe, Co-Chair of IPCC Working Group I.

The meeting, hosted by the Government of Sweden, runs from 23 to 26 September 2013. The Summary for Policymakers is due to be released on Friday 27 September. The full report will be released in unedited form on Monday 30 September. It will be published online in January 2014 and in book form shortly thereafter.

“Our assessment draws on millions of measurements which permit an unprecedented and unbiased view of the state of the Earth System. Millions of billions of bytes of numerical data form the foundation for estimates of possible futures of our climate. We have produced a Summary for Policymakers that presents the findings in the clearest possible manner, a document with no compromises to scientific accuracy.” said Thomas Stocker, the other Co-Chair of Working Group I.

The report builds on the four previous assessment reports produced by the IPCC since it was established in 1988, incorporating the scientific literature published since the last assessment report in 2007. Besides assessing the influence of human activity on the climate system, the report looks at projections of future climate change in both the near and long term.

A total of 259 authors and review editors were selected to produce the Working Group I report; they in turn enlisted the help of more than 600 contributing authors. Hundreds of expert reviewers provided comments to earlier drafts of the report, which draws on observations, model runs and cites more than 9,200 scientific publications. For the Fifth Assessment Report as a whole, a total of 831 authors and review editors were selected.

Participation in the meeting is open to all the IPCC’s 195 member countries, whose representatives discuss the Summary for Policymakers in detail, in consultation with the scientists responsible for drafting it. This strengthens the Summary for Policymakers by ensuring that its statements are as direct, clear and unambiguous as possible in summarizing the material contained in the underlying report. The participation of assessment authors ensures that any changes to the Summary for Policymakers are consistent with the underlying report and are scientifically robust.

(Source: IPCC Press Office)

Good Morning Thought - 25th September 2013!

In search of light, one doesn't have to wait until the end of the tunnel.  It’s in the frame of mind already, waiting to be explored…

Good Morning!

Good Evening thought - 22nd September 2013!

Good human beings, as God, are always expected to give and care. Neither they nor anyone else actually cares about what they want from others. That is why goodness and Mother Nature are sinking by the day...

Good evening friends!

Water and Joy! Good Morning Thought - 21st September 2013

Good Morning!

Have a Great Weekend!!

Whom should we address 'honorable' - Farmers or Ministers?

Yesterday, on 18th September 2013, I visited the plant office site of NTPC's ultra mega coal fired power plant being constructed in Chhattishgarh. The project has got green clearance from the MoEF but in an improper way (which we went to see and I would report on that later) and without considering the impacts over Mahanadi, forests and people in Odisha.

The plant site office would be inaugurated today(19th Sept) and hence you see this huge tent. We inquired with the project office people and if they are correct the tent has been brought from Andhra Pradesh at a cost of 10 million rupees. Helipads have been constructed for the inaugural at the cost of 4 million rupees. Flowers for the function, they say, have been bought at 1 lakh rupees. And there are other costs.

Many farmers are sacrificing their land and are yet to get compensation; villagers and ecology in Odisha are going to be drastically impacted negatively and are yet to be consulted; but these so called 'honorable' ministers (the PM's visit was dropped due to security issues we heard but the Chhatisgarh CM and other ministers from Delhi are coming) are flying to this remote location at a cost of not less than 20 million rupees I am sure.

Can we call these people's representatives, who are abusing millions of public money just to inaugurate a plant site office, honorable? Or the real honorable people are those farmers and villagers who are going to sacrifice their lands, homes, farm fields, water and dignity for this so called 'development'?

We seriously need to debate this!

Time to bridge this river divide - Rohan D'Souza

Dear Friends/Co-sailors,

In today's pick, I am sharing below link to Rohan D'Souza's article published in the Hindu that makes a wonderful case for the need of river conservation rather than damming them.  He takes the case of the Indus Water Treaty (IWT) signed in 1960 between India and Pakistan.

http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/time-to-bridge-this-river-divide/article5120925.ece

Would like to paste below the introductory paragraph that speaks for the article aptly.

Much of South Asia is now haunted by the spectre of hydro-electricity. At heart remains the sub-continent’s unsolved riddle of trying to ‘meaningfully share’ its many trans-boundary rivers. Existing river development models, as all governments have learnt, are indeed a zero sum game: in which a benefit extracted from one point of the river’s stem will inevitably involve a cost at another point in the flow. For all the careful wording that has gone into framing water treaties, sharing agreements or cooperation models, the overwhelming fact remains that every country in the region is energy starved, politically impatient and is compelled to tap rivers for hydropower.

Time we understood rivers as ecological entities and not commercial goods for benefit of us greedy humans.

I hope you will find this piece interesting.

Thanks and regards,

Ranjan

Sunday Morning Thought - 15th September 2013!

Real meditation is when you love and respect Mother Nature from core of your heart; surrender before her without any sense of fear and hesitation...

 Good Morning!

Happy Sunday!!

Indian cities getting alarmingly water scarce!

Dear Friends/Co-sailors,

For today's pick, I am sharing a news that is going to be the regular affair in this country hence forth.  This is especially because our cities are growing at the cost of all natural resources, villages and the poor.  

Even though I doubt the correctness of the statistics given in this news and have all my reasons to believe that the water availability situation is much worse in Indian cities, this is an alarming bell for sure.

What is more dangerous in this nation is that more water scarce the city become, more water they draw from villages.  They would hardly bother to be water sufficient in the cities themselves.  They kill all their rivers, water bodies and then kill all that from nearby by and far off villages and forests.  

This has to be stopped.  India has to wake up and stop the way cities are growing.  Cities have to have their own water resources to progress and sustain.

Thanks and regards,

Ranjan

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/22-of-Indias-32-big-cities-face-water-crisis/articleshow/22426076.cms

Good Morning Thought - 9th September 2013!

A creative mind has to be necessarily a responsible mind…

Good Morning!

Happy Ganesh Chaturthi!!

Good Morning Thought - 2nd September 2013

Living the maximum at the moment doesn't mean eating up the future. That's greed...

Good Morning!

A thought on the proposal to close fuel pumps during night

The MoEF website opens only on working days, during working days of their offices and officials. However, forests and environment of this country get destroyed each moment and to an irrecoverable extent. Shutting petrol pumps during nights, as being proposed by the Govt. of India, would not make any difference to consumption of petrol and diesel. The rich and luxurious will continue to consume and the needy will suffer...

Critique on National Water Policy 2012!

Update from the International Film Festival on Water, Bangalore:

My speech critiquing the National Water Policy at Bangalore on 31st August evening went very good. It invited a lot of response from the audience.

Some people from the audience, as well as some friends in FB, have requested me to upload the speech on internet.  I don't think it was recorded by the organisers, even though they said it was 'vibrant, motivating and inspiring'.  And, as because it was a public speech, I had not prepared any written presentation. 

For information of friends, therefore, I am attaching here my critique on the policy that was written during formation stage of it.  My speech covered these basic issues with updates on recent development.

Hope to receive your comments. 

Thanks,

Ranjan

http://infochangeindia.org/water-resources/analysis/water-economic-good-or-right-to-life.html