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May 07, 2006

Global Warming Turning Tibetan Plateau Into A Desert

Environment

There are times when the global warming news is so shocking, so horrifying, so profoundly sad, that you look around at people going about business as usual and you wonder if it's you or the rest of the world that's gone crazy. Why isn't the following front page news all over the world? The Independent:

Global warming is rapidly melting the ice-bound roof of the world, and turning it into desert, leading scientists have revealed.

The Chinese Academy of Sciences - the country's top scientific body - has announced that the glaciers of the Tibetan plateau are vanishing so fast that they will be reduced by 50 per cent every decade. Each year enough water permanently melts from them to fill the entire Yellow River.

They added that the vast environmental changes brought about by the process will increase droughts and sandstorms over the rest of the country, and devastate many of the world's greatest rivers, in what experts warn will be an "ecological catastrophe".

The plateau, says the academy, has a staggering 46,298 glaciers, covering almost 60,000 square miles. At an average height of 13,000 feet above sea level, they make up the largest area of ice outside the polar regions, nearly a sixth of the world's total.

The glaciers have been receding over the past four decades, as the world has gradually warmed up, but the process has now accelerated alarmingly. Average temperatures in Tibet have risen by 2 degrees Fahrenheit over the past 20 years, causing the glaciers to shrink by 7 per cent a year, which means that they will halve every 10 years.

Prof Dong Guangrong, speaking for the academy - after a study analysing data from 680 weather stations scattered across the country - said that the rising temperatures would thaw out the tundra of the plateau, turning it into desert.

He added: "The melting glaciers will ultimately trigger more droughts, expand desertification and increase sand storms." The water running off the plateau is increasing soil erosion and so allowing the deserts to spread.

Sandstorms, blowing in from the degraded land, are already plaguing the country. So far this year, 13 of them have hit northern China, including Beijing. Three weeks ago one storm swept across an eighth of the vast country and even reached Korea and Japan. On the way, it dumped a mind-boggling 336,000 tons of dust on the capital, causing dangerous air pollution. [...]

Perhaps worst of all, the melting threatens to disrupt water supplies over much of Asia. Many of the continent's greatest rivers - including the Yangtze, the Indus, the Ganges, the Brahmaputra, the Mekong and the Yellow River - rise on the plateau.

In China alone, 300 million people depend on water from the glaciers for their survival. Yet the plateau is drying up, threatening to escalate an already dire situation across the country. Already 400 cities are short of water; in 100 of them - including Beijing - the shortages are becoming critical. [Emphasis added]

I was thinking earlier today about the human capacity for denial. You'd think the steadily worsening global warming news would prompt immediate, determined action by the people of the world. But then everybody knows that smoking is bad for you, and obesity, and lack of exercise, but the average person doesn't turn that knowledge into immediate, determined action until the doctor tells them that if they don't stop what they're doing they will die, and soon. I was wondering what it will take for us to feel like we've just gotten that medical ulimatum with respect to climate change. This story out of China ought to come close, but it won't. Not here in the West, anyway. Probably not in China either, where they're gambling on economic growth to solve their problems. All the GDP growth in the world, though, won't help them when the water runs out.

As with so many of the global warming stories lately, we're talking here about phenomena that are accelerating with terrifying rapidity. It's all happening so much faster than anticipated. Is anyone paying attention?

[Thanks, Jeff]

Posted by Jonathan at May 7, 2006 08:54 PM  

Comments

Denial is understandable. First is the size and magnitude of this change. I get how difficult it can be for people to get their heads around this. Excluding only the universe and our solar system, this is the single largest thing anyone alive has had to put into any kind of perspective - it's gargantuan. We're creators of habit and this could really mess with our natural repetitiveness. We're also a bit hooked on happiness; we like things cozy and this has the potential getting messy. We grew with dreamy ideas of what our lives would be like all based on the status quo. Now the status quo may change. And finally there's selfishness. The human capacity for denial is huge, and understandable.

Global climate change is also a bit surreal. It evades what we experience on a daily basis, at least here in the US. I wake up everyday and go outside and *everything* is normal, from the weather to the sky to Lake Michigan to the plants and wildlife. Nature is doing exactly what it’s suppose to. In any given moment, not one of my senses can detect the slightest difference in global climate change. Even with the knowledge that winters here in Wisconsin have been mild for some time now I still have to actively remind myself that something big is brewing because it's not front page or headline news. It is An Inconvenient Truth ( http://climatecrisis.org/ ) with much of the inconvenience due to lack of awareness.

Posted by: Jeff at May 8, 2006 07:50 PM