Flaky Theories About Snowfall

There’s no agreement on why it has snowed in mid-altitude Pathankot and Dehradun

NEW DELHI The debate on global warming and climate change refuses to cool down. Apart from the cold wave making news (and claiming lives) in north India, the big news on India’s weather front is that it has snowed in Pathankot, Dharamshala and Dehradun. These are hardly places where you expect any snow.

Climate change believers and sceptics can’t agree on what this snowfall means for the global climate system. The sceptics—over email forwards and blogs—are saying that the current round of snowfall and cold wave in India and many other places in the northern hemisphere show that the earth’s surface is cooling down, and that global warming is just one big hoax, if not a conspiracy. They point out scenarios that had scared the living daylights out of us at one time, like islands such as Mauritius going underwater by the turn of the century. These still survive, and sceptics contend that the cooling and warming of the earth is a cyclical process, determined primarily by phenomena such as El Niño and La Niña, rather than human activity.

Chandra Bhushan, deputy director, Centre for Science and Environment, says that citing cold weather to deny global warming shows a lack of understanding. “Global warming does not impact the entire world in a similar manner,” he explains. “What it does is disrupt the global climate system. Freak weather phenomena, such as snowfall in Pathankot or Hoshiarpur, only confirm this. These events are in line with the prediction that global warming will lead to extremes of climate.”

But he does not dismiss climate change sceptics completely either, conceding that several scenarios predicted by climate change theorists have not materialised, because “we are still evolving our models for predicting climate”. But he adds that “ignorance should not be a reason not to act”.

So, what is the truth about climate change? Bhushan clarifies that the debate has fallen victim to those who exaggerate and those who deny climate change. And the truth, as always, lies somewhere in between.

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Alok Singh