Bill McKibben reports: On March 3, across the northern hemisphere, the temperature, for a few hours, crossed a line: it was more than two degrees Celsius above “normal” for the first time in recorded history and likely for the first time in the course of human civilization. Two degrees Celsius is the must-not-cross red line….
Read More about NEWS UPDATE #86
Sukumar Muralidharan reports on Catch News: This year’s economic survey is a catalogue of crises. For one thing, it records that the situation in agriculture has been dismal on account of two successive years of poor monsoons. This is only the fourth time in 115 years that such a misfortune has hit the Indian economy….
Read More about NEWS UPDATE #85
SkyMet founder Jatin Singh says: When SkyMet had said there was an El Nino and the 2014 monsoon won’t be good, the reaction of the then person in charge of IMD was that El Nino was a western conspiracy to play with our devices. But the IMD’s forecast after 2014 became very El Nino based….
Read More about CEO of India’s first private weather forecasting organisation on strange weather trends
January was the globe’s most unusually warm month ever recorded, and the past three months have been the most unusually warm three-month period on record as well, according to NASA. It is the combination of manmade global warming and a record strong El Niño that’s bumped up temperatures to never-before-seen levels since at least 1880….
Read More about NEWS UPDATE #84
Common Dreams reports: A new analysis, published in Science Advances journal, reveals that global water scarcity is a far greater problem than previously thought, affecting 4 billion people—two-thirds of the world’s population. Previous analyses looked at water scarcity at an annual scale, and had found that water scarcity affected between 1.7 and 3.1 billion people….
Read More about NEWS UPDATE #83
25 March 2015. Farmer Nityagopal Barman (43) committed suicide, after being unable to repay his loans
AFP
Rajabhau Deshmukh, a farmer from Beed says: We’ve been reaping merely 20-30% of our average crop in the last few years. Even as bank loans, moneylenders’ debts, relatives’ credits and the interest keep gnawing at us, we’ve to somehow run our homes. To be honest, it seems we are not even allowed to fall sick….
Read More about A Marathwada farmer’s wake-up call to India: try to understand why we die
India, Colombia and Nigeria have the most cases of conflict caused by climate change and environmental disputes, according to a map of global ecological conflict. The Environmental Justice Atlas, released last month, shows that more than 200 conflicts in India are caused by ecological disputes and scarcities of basic resources such as water and forests….
Read More about NEWS UPDATE #81
Aadi Kumbruka with various types of legumes, millets, oilseeds and corns grown on his farm.
India Water Portal
Nauri grows 72 varieties of crop on his two-acre farm. “The benefit of mixed cropping is that even in extreme weather events, we get something out of the field. Some crops work well in drought, others in flood. Compare this with mono cropping which won’t even yield enough to eat in severe drought”, he explains….
Read More about Tribals in Odisha humour changing skies with mixed platters
George Varghese
The rains have let us down terribly this year. There were farmers in our area who did not bother planting their rice crop when they realized that it wasn’t going to rain much this year and then there were others that took a chance and planted but didn’t bother harvesting since the crop was a disaster….
Read More about Weathering The Change - A Farmer’s Diary of 2015
Morvarid Fernandez
Morvarid Fernandez writes: Our crops failed, cattle graze the dry paddy straw, and fields remain fallow because there is not enough water. Bore wells are deeper, the lines longer, and the black blister bug – usually a bane – simply did not appear last year. The monsoon of 2015, you ask. But there just wasn’t one….
Read More about Winds of change – A view from NersaHaving endured three successive droughts, the region of Bundelkhand in Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh continues to be on edge. Governments in both the states have failed to do their bit. Here’s a press conference video and interview of Yogendra Yadav, who leads the Swaraj Abhiyan movement, which recently held an extended survey of the region….
Read More about Video & Report: Yogendra Yadav on the unfolding famine in Bundelkhand and the need for a farmers’ politicsIndiaSpend reports: Indian farms depend too much on increasingly uncertain rainfall: while there was not enough rain during the pre-monsoon kharif season (July-October) last year, there has been vastly excess rainfall during this rabi season (October-March). For instance, Eastern Rajasthan, the farm belt of the desert state, had more than 14 times the normal rainfall during this pre-monsoon season….
Read More about A Farmer’s Life Crisis — And India’s Farming Predicament
Melting asphalt distorts road markings in New Delhi, May 27, 2015
Harish Tyagi/EPA
IISc scientists report that minimum temperatures show “more pronounced” changes, compared to maximum temperatures in India. While maximum temperatures showed “a significant upward trend” in post-monsoon months in most regions, there was a rise in minimum temperatures across India in most seasons. The number of “significant trends” was greater for minimum temperatures than for maximum….
Read More about IISc study shows minimum temperatures rising in India
Post Carbon Institute
Noted energy expert Richard Heinberg writes: Our primary task this century will be to shrink the economy and rein in population while promoting human well being. We can do so as we minimize climate change by reducing energy consumption and by replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy resources. Otherwise, we get climate chaos and economic collapse….
Read More about Can We Have Our Climate and Eat It Too?
The hottest year in recorded history is coming to a close with a wave of extreme weather and ecosystem shifts, from unprecedented flooding in the United Kingdom to dangerous deluges in South America. Looking back at 2015, it’s clear that such extremes are not the exception, but the rule for the last year and beyond….
Read More about NEWS UPDATE #78
As many as 50 million people across the world face potential hunger, disease, and water shortages by early 2016 if countries do not act immediately, declared Oxfam on Monday, addressing those nations predicted to be ravaged by this year’s Super El Niño as well as wealthy governments indebted to those most vulnerable to climate change…
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Dead mango trees at the author's farm during the drought of 2011-2015
Uma Shankari
Chittoor-based farmer and activist Uma Shankari writes: After the year 2010, for the first time we’ve had good rains; in fact exceptionally good rains, a side effect of the Chennai disaster. My husband used to say, “If Chennai drowns, we’ll be saved”. This time it came true. We’ve not seen such heavy rains in twenty, thirty years….
Read More about Did Marx call the peasant an idiot? He was right, I am an idiot.
Columnist Tushar Dhara writes: Environmentalists, urban geographers, social activists and other such critically engaged citizens have consistently been talking about the perils of a development which ignores ecological sustainability and social justice — only to be told that they were against progress. A more damning criticism is “anti-national”, supposedly working on behalf of foreign interests….
Read More about A Message From The Chennai Floods: It’s Not Anti-National To Question ‘Development’
Commuters carry their motorbikes through a waterlogged street in Chennai
AP
“Studies show that with rising global temperatures, the intensity of rain spells is increasing, both in the southwest and northeast monsoons,” says M Rajeevan, director, Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology. While no single weather event can said to be directly affected by global warming, the probability of heavy rain increases in the climate change scenario….
Read More about Update: Chennai floods and climate change
An image from flooded Kotturpuram
PTI
Chennai experienced exceptionally heavy rainfall in 1969, 1976, 1985, 1996, 1998, 2005 and now in 2015. Even a decadal frequency is higher than the occurrence of extreme rain events in the first half of the 20th century. It’s likely that at least some of these six extreme rain events had the fingerprint of climate change….
Read More about Climate Change Brought the Rains, Our ‘Development’ Brought the Chaos
