On the news tonight: the Himalayan glaciers are now expected to have melted by 2030. It may be even quicker. The effects are:
1) the monsoon which dumps snow on the Himalayas will dump rain instead, and instead of the snow being a reservoir for rivers for the rest of the year, the rain will run off instantly. Therefore increasing floods and then drought.
2)There may be even less recharge going into India's underground aquifers, which are already being mined for water faster than they can recharge. This means less agriculture.More very hngry people.
3)Loss of glaciers will destabilise mountain sides as the underpinning has gone. This and rain rather than snow will lead to massive landslides.
4) Loss of albedo. Raises some interesting problems.
5) Trans-Himalyam Tibet dries up even more.
6)When the going gets tough, the tough get going and Australia is downwind and really not far away. Christmas Island simply isn't big enough to hold climate refugees.

HenryVIII
Soon, very soon we will have big problems on our planet but we are not enough mature or responsible to handle, on time, this kind of problems.
With glacier recession the water supply is threatened, and with it the farming economy. Water supply problems also have the potential to destabilize the political situation in the region. Continued and widespread melting of glaciers will lead to floods and water shortages for millions of people. As sea levels rise, coastal communities and habitats will be destroyed.
The fast melting of Himalayan glaciers creates the danger of catastrophic flooding, and do not forget that these glaciers supply water to one third of the world's population.
Do not worry HenryVIII, with leaders like Bush and region leaders to spent the wealth of their countries on the weapons we can not expect many things. WATER! one more reason to fight each other.
Antonios Symeonakis
Adelaide

hey...I have an idea.. lets bring them all to AUSTRALIA.. after all, we have soooo much water and sooo much land :)

I know, let's all pray. That'll help...

DO NOT WORRY!
Average glacial shrinkage has risen from 30 centimetres per year between 1980 and 1999, to 1.5 metres in 2006.
Some of the biggest losses have occurred in the Alps and Pyrenees mountain ranges in Europe.
Achim Steiner, Under-Secretary General of the UN and executive director of its environment programme (UNEP), said: "Millions if not billions of people depend directly or indirectly on these natural water storage facilities for drinking water, agriculture, industry and power generation during key parts of the year.

HenryVIII
Tell me the truth, do you think we have enough bullets to kill hundreds of millions of people who will leave their places of cause the climate change and try to migrate to Australia?
Super nationalists, racists, and any kind of criminals will have plenty work to do! The problem is that the people of these countries are the VICTIMS. WE, THE WESTERNERS have destroyed the environment. As you know USA have pollute the 25%, and Australians are the worst polluters per person in the world.
Antonios Symeonakis
Adelaide

Forget about it!

There's nothing you can do, and there is no proof that any of the shock/horror stories coming from an hysterical media will ever happen.

Some people just have to have something to worry about.

Antiseptic, You're beautiful, I love it !

I wonder whether BOAZ will take your advice ?

Forget about it!

There's nothing you can do, and there is no proof that any of the shock/horror stories coming from an hysterical media will ever happen.

Some people just have to have something to worry about.
Posted by Mr. Right, Tuesday, 18 March 2008 9:49:18 AM

Nice refreshing perspective Mr Right.

And I agree

The hysteria being generated by news-room focused climatologists using dubious pseudo-science to scare more government funding their way is despicable to the point when a reasoned view is expressed it gets overshadowed by the show-pony antics of the zealots.

One wonders how these glaciers and ice systems will fare with the new big freeze now being promoted for the poles?

Anyway it is pure hubris to presume the melting is anything to do with human activity, if it were maybe more climatologists would be demanding something to curtail human population growth, pareticularly in countries like India.

Instead they are hell bent on simply controlling and curtailing human lifestyle (through carbon taxes) - Socialism by Stealth.

Col Rouge, I quote your post.......

"The hysteria being generated by news-room focused climatologists using dubious pseudo-science to scare more government funding their way is despicable to the point when a reasoned view is expressed it gets overshadowed by the show-pony antics of the zealots."

I wonder how you arrive at that opinion, certainly not scientifically based I'm sure. Unlike the 3000 odd international government climate scientist who have arrived at a consensus over the problem. A problem which threatens us like nothing else unless we grapple with it.

Scare mongering ? I don't think so, and given time I don't think you will either. It is interesting to see the number of so called "informed" scientific voices have become quite mute now.

University of Kuopio,
The Response of the Himalayan Glaciers’ to Global Warming and Influence on Water Quality in the Rivers Originated from Himalayan Glaciers.
Melting of glaciers provides most reasonable indication of global warming. In recent decades, glaciers have begun melting at rates that cannot be explained by historical trends. The Himalaya is the youngest and fragile mountain system in the world. 17% of its area is covered by glaciers, which act as a huge freshwater reservoir with capacity of 8.6 X 106 m3 of water per year. They are the main sources of seven large rivers; Ganga, Indus, Brahmaputra, Salween; Mekong; Yantze and Hung Ho and enable the life of almost one billion people living downstream in the Indogangetic plains. Acceleration on receding of glaciers is placing one third of the world’s population at risks from flood, droughts and lack of drinking water. There is linear trend of the warming for annual mean temperature over this region by 0.26 ºC /10a.

I love knee-jerk reactions. They make their perpetrators SO vulnerable to my wit and unequivocally far superior knowledge. Did I write that the measured increase in melting from these glaciers was caused by anthropogenic global warming?

NO.

Read the post before you reach for your holster.

Rates of glacier melting can be measured easily and scientifically and compared with past equally valid measurements. Is it hysteria to report in the evening news the results of such measurements?

NO

If this situation is something to do with the claimed anthropogenic CO2 production, then it might spur a major atmospheric polluter, India, to do something about it and clean up the air. I don't buy into the western guilt trip over claimed anthropogenic CO2. It was simply our bad luck to have developed the industrial revolution first, and anyway, 40% of the Indian smoke haze now evident as far away across the Indian Ocean as the Seychelles comes from the hundreds of millions of home fires Indians use for cooking. They could use smoke-free (and CO2-free) solar heaters for the same job, if the Indian government could be bothered to supply them. India is not poor, although a lot of people live in poverty.

But we are going to see major hydrological problems in India in the next 10-20 years and it will affect us, one way or the other. Yes, I know Australia is too dry for 1 billion eco-migrants.

“Scare mongering ? I don't think so, and given time I don't think you will either. It is interesting to see the number of so called "informed" scientific voices have become quite mute now.
Posted by snake, Tuesday, 18 March 2008 1:29:56 PM”

Yeah. It’s because the media doesn’t want to hear their side, and they have probably given up trying. If people don’t want to listen, there is not much point in trying to get the message out.

Only 3,000 odd scientists have come up with the shock horror stories? That’s not many out of the world’s population of scientists! It’s a figure I’ve not heard before; I thought it would be a lot more, given the panic-stricken masses who believe the stories they tell

Interesting that Mr. Right should be echoing the words of James Lovelock, the British scientist who brought us the Gaia hypothesis and developed instruments for measuring ozone loss in the upper atmosphere.

Lovelock basically said "Party while you can. We've already passed the point of no return."

According to Lovelock economic progress and Merrill Lynch growth models are going to smash into the brick wall of limits within 20 years.

On other boards there've been folk talking about widespread starvation in the US. I disagree. What we'll see is heavily defended lifeboat nations in a sea of horror. Australia will be one of them. All you need is an AWACs aircraft or two and bombers. It's going to be ugly, and its basically the fault of the developed world and not the developing world where the horror will be unfolding.

It's going to be a civil liberties nightmare as well. It could hardly be otherwise when your government has the remit to turn back boats loaded with refugees and fire on those that refuse to turn back. Life is going to be tougher for everyone and there'll be precious little sympathy for refugees.

ANTISEPTIC.. yes lets pray by all means.. that our government will get in early and review all UN conventions which might expose us to floods of climate refugees.

Let's pray that our leaders will think long term and not just the next couple of years.

Let's pray that we realize that we have stuffed up the world, in some places/cases by overpopulation, and that the responsibility for the cultural/economic/climatic outcome of that.. is on the heads of those who made it happen..not on ours in Australia.

Let's pray that no decision is ever made in the name of 'compassion' which denies us our daily bread. (or water in our case...Melb)

Perhaps it would be good for us also to pray, that under God, we will be good stewards of our environment, such that our grand children actually have one.....