Not enough

Fifty-five major industrial powers that produce nearly 80 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions have submitted voluntary CO2 reduction targets, but a top UN climate official says they still fall short of what’s needed to limit future temperature increases to 2 C (3.6 F).

Meeting a Jan. 31 deadline established at the December climate summit in Copenhagen, the European Union set a goal of reducing emissions 20 percent below 1990 levels by 2020; Japan pledged to slash CO2 emissions by 25 percent below 1990 levels by 2020; the U.S. set a more modest target of reducing carbon dioxide emissions 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020; and China vowed to cut the so-called “carbon intensity” of its economy — the amount of CO2 produced per unit of gross domestic product — by 40 to 45 percent by 2020.

India reaffirmed to the United Nations that it would reject any attempt to impose legally binding climate change goals, but pledged to reduce emissions intensity by 20 to 25 percent by 2020 compared to 2005 levels.

So, is this all hot air? What if global warming is a hot air balloon? Simply because of a slip up by the IPCC, it does not augur well for the world to ignore the established facts in independent researches. Yes, even the glaciers. Using data from the Indian remote sensing satellite RESOURCESAT-1, scientists from the Ahmedabad-based Space Applications Centre (SAC) — part of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) — analysed changes in snow cover in the central and western Himalayas. The data shows that snow has started to melt during winter too, which could affect river patterns in the Himalayan river basins.

Rivers originating in the Himalayas depend on melting snow during the crucial summer months.

The team, writing in the February issue of Annals of Glaciology, monitored 28 basins in the Ganges and Indus river systems every five to ten, between October and June for three years from 2004. Annual changes in snow cover patterns reflect immediate responses to climate change, compared with changes in glaciers that respond slowly, over decades, according to Anil Kulkarni, coordinator of the research.

NASA’s satellites have been showing the shrinking of the polar ice caps over the years.

What do you think? Should your country be doing more? Or less? Is there some way to get the nations of the world to act together?