This article in CNN in quite scary. It is not beyond the realms of possibility that himalayan glaciers retreat because climate change. This will have severe repurcussions for more than half of humanity (India, B'desh, China, Burma, Mayanmar, Pakistan, Nepal...).
Fears of conflict between china, internal conflicts within India and China..
Have we passed the point of no return? Will a successful carbon trading market reduce the probability of this happening?
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The floods in AP are awful. With areas (which were under a severe drought until a few days ago) getting 50cm of rain in a day, the place just flooded like crazy. And with all dams having to discharge water at the same point in time, lots of villages were submerged in a watery grave.
How much of this flooding was caused by excessive damming of these river systems? Had large dams not been built to stem the flow of the river, would these floods still have occured? Or is it just impossible to budget for 50cm of rain on a given day? Cities in the developed workd (US, for instance) suffer immensely when they get 10 inches (25cm) of rain. 50 cm is much higher..
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Everybody's favourite prizes, the Ignobels have been awarded this year. Icelandic bank CEOs figure quite prominently on this list - as people who have showed man's ability to toy around with massive economies. And the Zimbabwean reserve bank got the mathematics prize for printing 1 cent denominations and well as one trillion dollar notes. Not to mention one smart gentleman who developed a bra which can be used as two gas masks, should the situation ever call for it.
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