THE MELTDOWN

The United Nations said that swathes of mountain ranges worldwide risk losing their glaciers by the end of the century if global warming continues at its projected rate.
The arctic ice cap, since the last ice age, 125000 years ago, for the first time could be circumnavigated this year due to the rapidly melting ice.

Outside of the polar ice caps, the Himalyas are the largest store of water, feeding atleast 10 Asian rivers including the Ganga, Brahmaputra and the Yamuna. Between 1996 and 2005 the Himalayan glaciers lost on an average, a mass of more than twice the ice loss of the previous decade.As the glaciers recede they leave behind glacial lakes. With the rapid melting of the glaciers there stands the problem of swelling glacial lakes. A burst in a glacial lake could cause flash floods in India, Nepal, Bhutan and Bangladesh. There however isn't an institutionalised system, of studying the Himalayan glaciers and the rate at which they are receding or the glacial lakes, in order in our country.
The BBC reported that according to the WWF, India, China and Nepal could experience floods followed by droughts in the coming decades. It has been reported that the glaciers which regulate the water supply to the Ganges and Brahmaputra besides some other rivers, are retreating at a rate of about 10-15 metres anually. The New York Times, in a report on the receding Himalyan glaciers, reported a study conducted on 466 glaciers by the Indian Space Research Organisation using sattelite imaging, which found that there had been a 20% reduction in size of the Himalayan glaciers between 1962 and 2001.

Even though it is a natural cycle for glaciers to melt and regulate the flow of water in the rivers and get rebuilt during snowfall, the survival of a glacier depends on the balance between the melting and the buildup. Over the last 2 decades the mean air temperature in the North Western Himalyas had risen by 2.2 degrees celsius, a rate considerably higher than the rate of increase over the last 100 years resulting in a much higher melting rate .The rate of warming of the climate continues to be very high.
The 20th century's last two decades were the hottest in 400 years.The United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reported that 11 of the 12 warmest years since 1850 have been after 1990. A report, based on the work of 2,500 scientists in more than 130 countries, concluded that humans have caused all or most of the current planetary warming. Human caused global warming is often called anthropogenic climate change.

Industrialization, deforestation, and pollution have greatly increased atmospheric concentrations of water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide, all greenhouse gases that help trap heat near the Earth's surface.These gases persist in the atmosphere for years, which means that even if such emissions were eliminated, it would not immideately stop global warming.
It has been pointed out that natural cycles in Earth's orbit can also alter the planet's exposure to sunlight, which may explain the current trend of increased global warming. Earth has indeed experienced warming and cooling cycles roughly every hundred thousand years due to these orbital shifts, but such changes have occurred over the span of several centuries. Today's changes have taken place over the past hundred years or less.

India's per capita share of emmissions is 1/20th that of industrialised countries.India has largely therefore resisted emmission caps on green house gasses as it would also result in stunting its economic growth. America claimed that it will face a cost of atleast $ 400 billion if it complies with the emmission standards imposed under the Kyoto Protocol. The United States of America is the only developed country that has not yet given its consent to comply with the treaty on climate change. However a number of companies in the US have started to make efforts to reduce emmissions to confirm to the standards that have been set.
Through Carbon Trading projects under the Clean Development Mechanism, India will be avoiding more than 5 million tonnes of carbon dioxide by 2012, cutting back 10% of the country's greenhouse gas emissions every year.
The Clean Development Mechanism is an arrangement under the Kyoto Protocol,allowing industrialised countries which have to reduce their green house emissions to invest in projects that reduce emissions in developing countries as an alternative to emission reductions in their own countries that will prove to be more expensive. Carbon credits are a key component of national and international emission trading schemes that have been implemented to reduce global warming. Credits can be exchanged between businesses or bought and sold in international markets.
India is making a significant contribution through this tool, in reducing the pressure that industrial development is mounting on the Earth's climate.

Keeping in mind the changing climate.. the melting glaciers in the world's largest storehouse of water outside the polar ice caps.. and the carbon trading..the rather cliche' question stands to pose again - Are we doing enough?
Obviously, if India is set to avoid more than 5 million tonnes of carbon dioxide by 2012, then it sounds like quite a lot is being done...

... that however is an exception to the fact that we still aren't too sure if our refrigerators use the most energy efficient technology, we don't even know which of our body sprays, hair sprays etc. have CFCs or if all body sprays have CFCs in them, leaving the air conditioner on for longer than needed has most usually only one effect - a senior member of the family paranoid about the unnecessarily huge elctricity bill...and thats all.

As discussions and international conferences on climate change continue, India, Nepal, Bhutan are amongst some of the countries from around the world that need to start doing a lot more than just cutting carbon emmissions, as they won't just be hit by fluctuating Earth temperatures but also very soon they will be hit by floods and other natural disasters caused by the receding glaciers on the Himalayas. If Disaster Management were to be a public company, there are chances that you would want to have your shares in it, the Disaster Management guys might just be doing a lot of business in the coming decades.