It is indeed shameful and shocking! Indian scientists in senior positions have acted irresponsibly. How can an impeccable body of scientists constituting the UN Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) allow inclusion of 'grey literature' that has not been peer reviewed? 

According to Professor Julian Dowdeswell, a glacier specialist at Cambridge University, the average glacier in the Himalayas is 1,000ft thick so even if were to lose 15ft of a glacier a year, it would still take 60 years for that glacier to disappear. Going by the recorded loss of glaciers, 15ft is way too much. In the light of this understanding, the scenario given by the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report - that we would lose all glaciers by 2035 - is unrealistic. What is surprising is that IPCC entrusted charge of the glacier chapter to Prof Murari Lal who admits he is not a glaciologist. Scenerios built by him were based on a remark made by Syed Hasnain, again an Indian scientist who gave the year 2035 as an off the cuff remark to the magazine New Scientist. 

There was worse to come. When Indian scientists, in a recent report strongly supported by environment minister Jairam Ramesh, questioned IPCC's conclusions, IPCC head Dr R.K. Pachauri, who is not a climatologist or a scientist, called it 'voodoo science!’ Unpalatable indeed! Instead, it would have been better if IPCC scientists would have welcomed the study and said they would use it to revisit their own conclusions. After all, new data continuously advances scientific research.   

Whatever the larger debates, for people living in the mountains, the weather patterns are changing. We took the kids to Nainital and Binsar for a week's holiday this New Year Day. The kids wanted to see snowfall. When I was in school, snow used to fall here in December. When I began working and visited the place for work, I was told that snow now fell in January. This January, it was sunny and bright. I was told by the residents that last year it had snowed in February, and that too was not heavy snow. 

Three months ago, I attended a public hearing on climate change in Rishikesh. It was organized by several civil society organizations which had come together to focus on the Himalayan ecosystem. I remember one woman testifying that in her village it used to always snow in winters. Now, she said, it only rains. Others told us how vegetation was shifting upward as lower villages become warmer. The government itself has recorded the upward shifting of the apple belt. 

Whatever Jairam Ramesh may say about the science of our glaciers, is he ensuring that the government’s schemes are factoring in climate change -- whatever rate at which it is happening? Let us turn the heat on the government because the evidence seems to be on the contrary. To give one instance, the rapid damming of the Himalayan rivers to provide thousands of mega watts of electricity is blind to the consequences of climatic changes and the geology of the young mountains. As glaciers melt -- at whatever pace this happens -- rivers are likely to swell first and then decline leading to increased flooding and submergence. Glacier lakes outbursts are now causing flash floods. The decline in the flow will turn these dams into high-risk, non-performing assets. Science needs to be questioned today. So do some development schemes that do not take into account any scientific data.