http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/goa/the-global-meltdown/articleshow/59994037.cms
Everywhere, there's more evidence that the world is in climatic meltdown. On Monday this week, the eminent author (and part-time Goa resident) Amitav Ghosh tweeted an alarming video file of a flaming palm, writing, "I am told it is so hot in Kuwait that trees are spontaneously combusting." Just last month, that desert country registered the "hottest temperature ever recorded on earth", an astonishing 54 degrees Celsius. Neighbouring Iran, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Syria also recorded highest-ever temperatures recently. It's becoming painfully apparent the entire Middle East is inexorably turning too hot for comfortable existence. The first cradle of human civilization could eventually become an abandoned moonscape. At the same time, Europe is suffering a calamitous summer, with temperatures holding above 40C across the continent. This devilish heatwave, inevitably called 'Lucifer', has already killed several people. In Serbia, train tracks became so warped from the baking sun, that service was halted. Runaway wildfires are raging in Bosnia, Macedonia and Croatia simultaneously, following another deadly set of blazes which killed dozens in Portugal. Romania's capital city of Bucharest has alerted all citizens to stay indoors during afternoon hours, while at least half of Spain remains on identical emergency alert. Another sign of disruption: Italy's grape harvest for wine-making started a full month earlier than anyone can remember happening in the past. Of course, there's no need to look far away for evidence of global warming and catastrophic climate change. This monsoon season, everyone can tell Goa has experienced more sunny days than cloudy, and received just barely two-thirds its normal share of rain. Just across the border, Karnataka staggers through the worst drought in five decades, caused by its fourth consecutive failed monsoon. Chief minister Siddaramaiah has declared a water emergency in 160 of 176 talukas. Over Goa's other border, chief minister Devendra Fadnavis recently promised, "In two years we can make Maharashtra drought free." But by his own government accounts, nearly 30,000 villages are officially registered as drought-afflicted. Fadnavis's Maharashtra tallied an astonishing 852 farmer suicides in just the first four months of this year, adding to an utterly tragic national epidemic that is directly linked to global warming caused by climate change. A few days ago, scientist Tamma Carleton (of the University of California) released an eye-opening study associating rising temperatures with nearly 60,000 farmer suicides in India. She found an increase of even just one degree resulted in 67 additional people killing themselves, while timely rainfall immediately corresponded to drops in the death rate. Carleton writes, "This effect occurs only during India's agricultural growing season, when heat also lowers crop yields. I find no evidence that acclimatization, rising incomes, or other unobserved drivers of adaptation are occurring." The enormous scale of looming disaster is underlined by another important international study published a few days ago by the journal 'Science Advances'. Drs Eun-Soon Im (Hong Kong University), Jeremy S Pal (Loyola Marymount University) and Elfatih Eltahir (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) warn "the most intense hazard from extreme future heatwaves is concentrated around densely populated agricultural regions of the Ganges and Indus river basins. Climate change, without mitigation, presents a serious and unique risk in South Asia, a region inhabited by about one-fifth of the global human population, due to an unprecedented combination of severe natural hazard and acute vulnerability." This stunning, highly depressing analysis is predicated on 'wet bulb temperature' (WBT), which factors in the cooling effects of humidity. Once WBT crosses 35 degrees, humans get no relief by sweating, and even perfectly fit people sitting in the shade will die after a few hours of exposure. According to the 'Science Advances' study, if current patterns of unchecked carbon emissions hold, that disastrous scenario is sure to unfold in India in this coming century, exposing a minimum of 4% of the national population to "unsurvivable six-hour heatwaves of 35C WBT". Major cities like Lucknow and Patna are likely to be wiped out, and tens of millions will die. It will be the end of India as we know it. There is a tiny glimmer of hope, however. The authors caution that 35C WBT "killer heatwaves" need not occur if the nations of the world manage to reduce carbon emissions in line with their own global Paris climate change agreements. Here, it is to China and India's immense credit that each is almost guaranteed to meet its assigned goals, thanks to hugely impressive realignment to green technologies. Eltahir of MIT points out that the highly dangerous (but not quite fatal) 31C WBT level would recur regularly for around 500 million Indians if climate change continues unabated, but only for fraction of that number if the Paris targets are achieved. He said, "The problem is very alarming, but the intensity of the heatwaves can be reduced considerably if global society takes action."