Is global warming a hoax? Are the polar bears really disappearing? Will the Ganges become a seasonal river by 2035 due to rapid depletion of the Gangotri glacier? Will the sea levels rise high enough to gobble up coastal regions? Or is “Climate Change” the catchphrase of this decade, overriding some of the more serious and imminent threats to our planet?

Open Magazine’s (yeah, again!) article Climate of Chaos addresses these and many more questions related to climate change and exposes the Inconvenient Truth in a whole new light. Do read for some very interesting snatches of information. For instance did you know that:

Some, like Philip Stott, professor emeritus of biogeography at the University of London, argue that historically, there have been sharp rises in tempera­ture over very short periods. In 1200 AD, Europe was 2 degrees centigrade warmer than it is today and agriculture flourished even in Greenland.

Or, for some perspective:

While the world’s population increased by 300 per cent in the 20th century, the use of water increased by a staggering 700 per cent. Over a longer period of 250 years since the Industrial Revolution, carbon dioxide formulations in the atmosphere have gone up by approximately 37 per cent, methane by 150 per cent and nitrous oxide by 16 per cent.

Perhaps it’s time to re-orient our thinking and focus on more pressing and real issues, ones we can act upon and remedy before its too late.

Couldn’t help but see this as an exhibit on display. The tree stump is a work of art and the creator’s name is painted on the grill. (Click on image to see it in a larger size)

This tree was one of the hundreds that was cut on a road in Bangalore to make way for the Metro. The place looks barren now, with a lot of construction dust all around. A war-zone like feeling, with all the victims being mute enough to not bother us.

Those of you who are in Bangalore must have observed the incessant felling of trees with the aim of widening the roads.

Today is World Environment Day. In the year 1972, The United Nations General Assembly had designated 5th of June as World Environment Day.

We, the employees of my company, are sporting World Environment Day badges on ourselves. The badge reads “I Do My Bit For the Environment, Do You?”.

Of course, I am wearing this badge since it is a part of the entire set of campaigns occurring in my office building. However, do I genuinely do anything substantial to save the environment? I don’t think so. While I continue to mull over on what I could do to contribute my bit, I came across some interesting tidbits on Wikipedia’s page for the World Environment Day:

The slogan for 2008 WED is “CO2, Kick the Habit! Towards a Low Carbon Economy.”

I liked the caption for 2007: “Melting Ice – a Hot Topic?”
In fact, all the captions seem very witty and interesting. For the record, the first slogan in 1974 was “Only One Earth”.
See the entire list of themes here.

Foreign Policy and Prospect have come up with a list of Top 100 Public Intellectuals. (Link obtained via Cosmic Variance).

The list includes the following people from India:

Ramachandra Guha – Historian
Ashis Nandy – Political Psychologist
Sunita Narain – Environmentalist
V.S. Ramachandran – Neuroscientist (Richard Dawkins calls him the “Marco Polo of neuroscience”)
Amartya Sen – Development Economist

Also, you can vote for your top 5 public intellectuals out of this list to decide who should get the top honours.
The criteria of selection has been to consider those who have had the maximum impact on public discussions related to various matters of public importance.

From one of the graphs depicted on the site, it was interesting to see that a majority of the top 100 are political scientists. And in the minority are Environmentalists.
I suppose this confirms the trend of minimal environmental concern that the public has as compared to its focus on politics and economics? The US Presidential Elections vs. Global Warming campaigns is a good analogy eh?