Water & Global Warming

Weather has become so hot in Mumbai. Though it has always been sultry and humid due to surrounding Arabian Sea, but did not feel so hot. As the afternoon sets in, I can clearly see the dwindling number of people in the streets. What’s up? There is so much talk about global warming on TV, among friends and among general intelligentsia. I noticed a very dangerous sounding scroll; ‘Will Mumbai get drowned?’ rolling by, on a Hindi news channel. It thought it was too direct a message. It may in fact work against the idea of making citizens aware. It may scare them and make them quit the city itself! If a common man in his individual capacity feels like selling his house; take the money and shift to another city to set up his business, it may not be too bad. But if a few business houses decide that their factories are near the sea and may get non-functional in another 10-20 years, then the matter is entirely different. If no one invests in a city by the sea since it may get affected by the predicted rise in sea levels, there will be an out flux of people from those cities which will become unmanageable.

I have no idea how seriously the sea level rise is being taken by the corporate world, because it has not been noticed so far. I also can’t claim how real the threat is. There are a lot of panic stricken loud voices on this topic presently; much more than any other time in the past.  

There are descriptions and details of receding glaciers and their rate of reduction. Scientists have been feeding us with the data of how many meters of ice per year each of the glaciers is loosing? What is thickness of snow cover then & now and reduction in the water levels of various rivers? Ice cover on both poles, Arctic and Antarctic is too under threat, along with the lives of Penguin, Polar bear and so many other species. 

But when an old Hindu holy man near Gangotri tells in a camera interview that he has noticed a certain part of Ganga had receded by a distance of about half a kilometer in last 20 years, then it gets serious. This personal first hand experience of the global warming must be believed. Actually effect of this phenomenon can really put the world in a much worse situation than the current problems of religious fundamentalism or terrorism. From the times immemorial the civilizations have come up near flowing water bodies. Cities have sprung up and thrived on the banks of Ganga, Yamuna, Brahmputra, Nile, Thames and Amazon. Water of Ganga in India has already become much more polluted than it has ever been in the past. The reason is that the ratio of amount of water and the pollutants has become very unhealthy now. Many Hindu devotees say that now the color of water has changed and its taste too is not the same. In India we worship all the rivers, because they sustain life. For us, any element that helps you live well is equated to God. Other than its mythological importance, Ganga has been the largest provider of life to so many cities in the northern part of India, before finally becoming one with the Bay of Bengal near Kolkata.

In my opinion if the rate of ice melting in the mountains is higher now, then the water levels in the rivers actually should rise rather than reducing. Of course it will dry off totally after all the ice is used up. The water in any river will reduce only if the total ice cover in its mother glacier has already reached below its critical limit. I don’t think that is the case as yet. In the near past too Ganga has never got flooded in summer due to excess ice melting in Gangotri.