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sea level rise

CLIMATE CRISIS

How the wealthy are plotting to leave us behind: An inside account

9th August 2018

Douglas Rushkoff writes: (The billionaires I recently met) were preparing for a digital future that transcends the human condition altogether while insulating themselves from a very real and present danger of climate change, rising sea levels, mass migrations, global pandemics and resource depletion. For them, the future of technology is really about just one thing: escape….

Bookshelf

Book review: The Water Will Come

24th May 2018

‘As the waters rise,’ Jeff Goodell writes, ‘millions of people will be displaced, many of them in poor countries, creating generations of climate refugees that will make today’s Syrian war refugee crisis look like a high school drama production.’ There’s no longer any doubt that the rise in global sea levels will reshape human civilisation….

CLIMATE CRISIS

Inside Antarctica: the continent whose fate will affect millions

1st April 2018

From Financial Times: Antarctica is changing fast, including sections of the massive ice sheet that covers it. This holds so much water that if it ever melted completely, global sea levels would rise by nearly 60m. The race to understand Antarctica has become more urgent. Also watch, the documentary ‘The Antarctica Challenge: A Global Warning.’…

eft: November 2017, courtesy Utpal Giri. Right: January 2014

Nagraj Adve

CLIMATE CRISIS

In a Bengal school swallowed by the sea, a lesson for the world

30th December 2017

When a group of us visited Boatkhali Kadambini Primary School four years ago, classes were on in full swing. This primary school is at one edge of Sagar island in the Sunderbans. That entire stretch, including the Boatkhali school, has now been swallowed up by the sea, including the house in which we had stayed….

CLIMATE CRISIS

The icesheet cometh

3rd December 2017

From Grist.org: Two Antarctic glaciers act as a plug holding back enough ice to pour 11 feet of sea-level rise into the world’s oceans —an amount that would submerge every coastal city on the planet. Finding out how fast these glaciers will collapse is one of the most important scientific questions in the world today….

New York Magazine

CLIMATE CRISIS

Viral essay: The Uninhabitable Earth

15th July 2017

It is not often that an article about climate change becomes the most hotly debated item on the internet. But David Wallace-Wells’ lengthy essay published in New York Magazine did exactly that. The full text of the essay –admittedly a worst-case scenario- which has kicked up a firestorm of debate online, along with selected responses….

CLIMATE CRISIS

One of the biggest icebergs in recorded history just broke loose from Antarctica

13th July 2017

The Washington Post reports: Scientists have announced that a much-anticipated break at the Larsen C ice shelf in Antarctica has occurred, unleashing a massive iceberg that is more than 2,200 square miles in area and weighs a trillion tons. Also, Nagraj Adve on why India must heed the cracking of this Haryana-sized Antarctic ice shelf….

CLIMATE CRISIS

The shocking connection between doomsday maps and billionaire land acquisitions

16th June 2017

From Forbes Magazine: With all of the knowledge of future mapping, do the world’s financial leaders know something we don’t? Consider how many of the richest families have been grabbing up massive amounts of farmland around the world. All property far away from coastal areas and in locations conducive to self-survival, farming and coal mining….

CLIMATE CRISIS

Watch: The top 10 countries in danger from future sea level rise

26th April 2017

From The Daily Conversation: This video shows the top 10 countries threatened by the 6 meter sea level rise we are almost guaranteed to see in the not-too-distant future, according to the projected pace of global warming and ice melt in Greenland and Antarctica. India is No. 3 on the list, and China No. 1….

CLIMATE CRISIS

Why India must heed the cracking of a Haryana-sized ice shelf in Antarctica

30th March 2017

In West Antarctica, a huge ice shelf called Larsen C has developed a rift 175 kilometres long and half-a-kilometre wide, which could soon set loose an iceberg the size of Haryana, at over 5,000 sq. km. We need to pay more attention because it could potentially gravely impact India in the near and long term….

CLIMATE CRISIS

Man points camera at ice – then captures the unimaginable on film

20th February 2017

Newsner reports: During a National Geographic-commissioned photo expedition to the Arctic, photographer James Balog and his team were examining a glacier when their cameras caught something out of the ordinary. This rare footage has gone on record as the largest glacier calving event ever captured on film, and presents a dire warning of things to come….

Sea level rise has washed away more than 50% of Ghoramara island, Sunderbans

Daesung Lee

CLIMATE CRISIS

India’s perfect storm: Environmental and demographic stresses building up

21st May 2016

Kanti Bajpai writes: India’s water crisis is a clear sign that a storm of epic proportions is on its way. India’s per capita water availability is now below the threshold level of 1,400 cubic metres per person. If so, India is heading from ‘water stress’ to ‘water scarcity’ and the possibility of internal water wars….

CLIMATE CRISIS

Video: Climate science pioneer Hansen warns of disastrous climate shift

31st March 2016

The world may be much closer to an abrupt and catastrophic climate shift than previously thought. That’s the warning from modern climate science pioneer James Hansen. His latest research suggests that polar ice sheet disintegration may cause sea level rise enough to drown coastal cities, not in a few centuries, but in a few decades….

NEWS ARCHIVE

NEWS UPDATE #88

24th March 2016

Nihar Gokhale reports: Rainfall across India in March has been 300-500% higher and often were accompanied by hailstorms. As a result, winter crops across six Indian states – Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra – stand destroyed. Rain and the accompanying hail has damaged upto 60% standing winter crops across the country….

Sea level rise has washed away more than 50% of Ghoramara island, Sunderbans

Daesung Lee

CLIMATE CRISIS

Nationalists take note – its nature that draws borders, not nation-states

4th March 2016

If any of us have fixed geographical notions of the nation-state, the rise and fall of sea levels everywhere ought to give us pause. Not just in warnings about the future, but also lessons from the past. Once, England and France were contiguous landmass… our borders are drawn not by us, but by the oceans….

CLIMATE CRISIS

NEWS UPDATE #85

3rd March 2016

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….

EI_EcoPictures/Twitter

CLIMATE CRISIS

India may need $1 trillion by 2030 to adapt to climate change

2nd December 2015

As climate risks grow worse, the dynamic adaptation gap for India could grow to $360 billion in finance and much more in technology. Nayantara Narayanan, Scroll.in As the 21st Conference of Parties on Climate Change gets underway in Paris, a major sticking point in the deliberations will be climate finance. India is leading the charge…

CLIMATE CRISIS

NEWS UPDATE #73

18th November 2015

Overheated Planet Entering ‘Uncharted Territory at Frightening Speed’ Common Dreams With new evidence that the concentration of greenhouse gases broke yet another record in 2014, the head of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) warned on Monday that the warming planet is hurtling “into uncharted territory at a frightening speed.” The United Nations weather agency’s latest…

CLIMATE CRISIS

Research: Burning existing fossil fuels will melt the Antarctic ice sheet

17th November 2015

READ ORIGINAL PAPER: Combustion of available fossil fuel resources sufficient to eliminate the Antarctic Ice Sheet By Ricarda Winkelmann, Anders Levermann, Andy Ridgwell and Ken Caldeira If We Burned All the Fossil Fuel in the World Elizabeth Kolbert, The New Yorker What would happen if we burned through all of the fossil-fuel resources known to…

CLIMATE CRISIS

News update

21st September 2015

Global Harming: India’s rich have a bigger ecological footprint than the world average Nihar Gokhale, Catch News It is no secret that there’s a growth in luxury goods in India. A 10-minute walk in any big city would attest to this. Over the last few generations, lifestyles have changed significantly, and a culture of consumerism…