Conservative
Type 40
Panetta: Climate change has 'dramatic impact on national security'This would be some big-surprise (only) to some poorly-educated White-Trash Teabagger.
December 14, 2009
"Among the scenarios that concern security planners is the melting of the massive Himalayan ice mass. In theory, the rivers fed by the Himalayan glaciers would flood at first, then dry up once the glaciers retreat. That would endanger tens of millions of people in lowland Bangladesh.
Retired Air Marshal A.K. Singh, a former commander in India's air force, foresees mass migrations across national borders, with militaries soon becoming involved.
"It will initially be people fighting for food and shelter," Singh says. "When the migration starts, every state would want to stop the migrations from happening. Eventually, it would have to become a military conflict. Which other means do you have to resolve your border issues?"
Melting glaciers on the Himalayas not contributing to sea level rise
Previous studies relied on physical measurements of ice caps and glaciers on the ground.
However less than 120 out of more than 160,000 across the world have actually been measured because of the difficulty of accessing freezing and remote regions.
The new study, published in Nature, used satellites to measure the loss of ice from ice caps and glaciers for the first time from 2003 to 2010.
The results found that overall ice loss from ice caps and glaciers on land, excluding the huge ice caps on Greenland and Antarctica, is adding 0.4 mm per year to sea levels compared to previous projections that estimated 1mm per year.
Mountain glaciers in Asia in particular are having a much smaller effect than thought, with a neglible mass loss from the Himalayas over the last ten years.