News

•  Aug 20/10 The Statesman (India) " WHAT is wrong with the planet?" by Claude Arpi:
  
  WHAT is wrong with the planet?  Russia is burning.
  More than a week after wildfires started ravaging
  several areas around Moscow, it was reported that
  more than 500 forest fires, covering a total area
  of 465,000 acres, were still raging. People are
  fleeing the Russian capital, besieged by a heavy
  fog. On TV, one could see phantasmagoric sights
  of the Kremlin in a haze one associates with
  London (but with 42 degree Celsius).
  
  With the fires and heat not showing any sign of
  receding, Russia had no choice but to put an
  embargo on the sale of wheat ~ a decision that
  has had a cascading effect on world cereal
  prices. The situation is so serious that the
  authorities have extended a state of emergency in
  the Moscow region until 15 September. Prime
  Minister Vladimir Putin, who visited the Voronezh
  region south of Moscow, declared: "The heat is
  unimaginable for these locations, the strongest in 140 years."
  
  AFP reported: "Russia has for days battled to cut
  back hundreds of blazes across the country,
  including fires in a nature reserve near its top
  nuclear research centre in Sarov, a town still
  closed to foreigners as in Soviet times."
  
  The President, Dmitry Medvedev, sacked several
  senior naval officers for having failed to stop
  wildfires coming close to the nuclear research
  facility. Medvedev even warned the head of the
  Russian Navy, Admiral Vladimir Vysotsky, for not
  tackling a fire at a naval logistics base in
  Kolomna, south-east of Moscow. According to
  reports: "The damage was colossal: the staff
  headquarters, financial department, 13 warehouses
  containing aeronautical equipment and 17 storage
  areas containing vehicles were destroyed in the blaze."
  
  Then at 5:20 p.m on 11 August, a mudslide hit
  Drugchu (Zhouqu county in Chinese), in the Gannan
  Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture of Gansu province.
  The county lies in the valley of the Bailong
  river, a tributary of the Jialing river, which
  flows into the mighty Yangtze in Chongqing. The
  famous Tibetan monastery of Labrang Tashi Kyil,
  one of the largest on the plateau is close by. In
  the case of Drugchu, the tragedy might not be entirely 'natural'.
  
  Xinhua admitted that the factors behind the
  mudslide were the "mountainous terrain and loss
  of ground cover." In other words, heavy
  deforestation. According to the deputy director
  of the Department of Geological Environment at
  the Ministry of Land and Resources, "a lingering
  drought lasting almost nine months in some local
  areas and the 2008 Sichuan earthquake that might
  have loosened the mountainside and caused some
  cracks are also reasons behind the devastating mudslide."
  
  In 1997, Ma Dongta, an engineering expert at the
  Institute of Mountain Hazards and Environment in
  Chengdu had warned that a large-scale mudslide
  could occur in the area. Nobody had listened. The
  Tibetan blogger and poetess, Woeser, quotes
  several government reports: "There are 47
  hydro-electric construction projects in the
  region and so far 15 hydro-electric power plants
  have been constructed, 14 more are under
  construction." It added that local Tibetans
  believe that the extensive construction projects
  have upset the region's fragile eco-system.
  
  At 9.30 p.m. the next day, at the other end of
  the Tibetan world , intense convective cloud
  clusters developed over Leh, the capital of
  Ladakh. As scientists described it, clouds began
  "disgorging their moisture between 1.30 am and 2
  am." Leh is an unusual place for a cloudburst as
  it is a cold desert region with low average
  rainfall. The maximum rainfall recorded in Leh
  was 96.2 mm in a 24- hour period in 1933. This
  cloudburst yielded 250 mm rainfall within an
  hour. The phenomenon was clearly local; an Air
  Force observatory some distance away from the
  cloudburst zone, recorded only 12.8 mm of rain.
  
  But what is a cloudburst? According to
  meteorologists, it is "a sudden aggressive
  rainstorm falling for a short period of time
  limited to a small geographical area." They say
  that the rain from a cloudburst is "usually of
  the shower type with a fall rate equal to or
  greater than 100 mm per hour." Due to a rapid
  condensation of the clouds, the entire amount of
  water tumbles down on a small area with disastrous consequences.
  
  An eye-witness of the Leh tragedy recounts: "I
  returned from Pangong [Lake] to Leh to find
  something rather unusual. For Ladakh to have
  successive days of rain was almost unheard of. I
  asked my guesthouse owner about it, and he was
  unequivocal in his answer, 'It never does. Global warming'!"
  
  The foreign tourist added: "On the night of 5
  August, I had dinner with a group of Indian
  travellers. The drizzle that had been steadily
  falling for an hour or so suddenly became an
  absolute deluge. The storm lasted an hour, the
  sound was of a hundred million ball bearings
  falling on metal. Lightning ripped across the sky
  like constant static along a black wool quilt. It
  was quite a storm. In one hour, the land of
  Ladakh was forever changed. This vast country shifted."
  
  The next morning, the tourist went to the bazaar.
  The bus stand was submerged. "A vast river of mud
  and rock had torn through central Leh, ripping
  apart houses, demolishing shops, flattening
  structures to the ground. Buses were tossed about
  like toys, slammed up against buildings, wedged
  under trucks, flattened and twisted in
  incomprehensible shapes. As I walked down the
  length of the slide, I realized that it was far
  more than the bus station. The cascade extended
  all the way down the valley, two miles or more,
  and much of lower Leh was, well, utterly ruined."
  
  The next day he went to Choglamsar, a small
  village a few kilometers from Leh where he saw
  another river of mud and rock and
  incomprehensible devastation: "As I write this,
  at least 500 are still missing in Choglamsar alone."
  
  But that is not all. We have seen the tragic
  pictures from Pakistan where the floods have
  displaced 15 or 20 million people and killed a couple of thousands.
  
  And the immense iceberg, which has parted ways
  with a polar glacier in Greenland. The iceberg is
  four times the size of Manhattan. According to
  scientists, the Arctic had not lost such a mass of ice since 1962.
  
  Are all these events co-related? Though it is
  difficult to prove anything, weather scientists
  are perplexed. In an article in the New York
  Times, titled "In Weather Chaos, a Case for
  Global Warming, Justin Gillis explains:
  "Seemingly disconnected, these far-flung
  disasters are reviving the question of whether
  global warming is causing more weather extremes."
  He quotes Jay Lawrimore, chief of climate
  analysis at the National Climatic Data Center in
  Asheville, USA: "The climate is changing, extreme
  events are occurring with greater frequency and
  in many cases with greater intensity."
  
  What is weird is that a few days earlier, from 2
  to 6 August, delegates from around the world met
  in Bonn. They were invited by the UN Convention
  on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the international
  body coordinating negotiations after the
  Copenhagen Summit and before the Cancun meeting.
  Though another round of talks will be held in
  Taijin, China in October, there is now very
  little hope to sign a binding international
  agreement to reduce greenhouse gases at the next
  UN conference on climate change scheduled for
  December in Cancun, Mexico. Everyone agreed that
  the talks proceeded in reverse gear.
  
  One conference succeeds another. While the
  decision-makers keep talking, debating and
  quarrelling, the climate tumbles out of control.
  
   

Images of the Dalai Lama are forbidden in greater China.  And guess what else?  

•   Aug 18/10 Phayul,  "Restrictions . . . " by Tenzin Tsering:
  
  Dharamsala, August 18 -- Chinese authorities in Tibet's Chamdo region
  are warning Tibetans against displaying or keeping in possession
  pictures of the 17th Gyalwang Karmapa, head of the Kagyu sect of
  Tibetan Buddhism who fled his monastery in Tibet in 2000.
  
  Radio Free Asia reported ("Karmapa photos reported seized") that Tibetans are not permitted to keep his photographs either as amulets or display them in motor vehicles, a
  traditional Tibetan practice to protect against misfortune.
  
  The young head of Kagyu sect of Tibetan Buddhism made headlines when
  he arrived in Dharamsala on January 5, 2000. Ogyen Trinley Dorjee is
  now 25 and lives near Dharamsala, the seat of Tibetan exile in
  government. He is considered close to the Tibetan leader, the Dalai
  Lama whom China accuses of engaging in "splittist" activities and
  calls "wolf in monk's robe."
  
  A Tibetan man who recently arrived in Nepal from Tibet was quoted as
  saying, "Last year, in Chamdo's Shankou, Karmapa's photos were
  outlawed in an announcement made by the Chinese authorities." The man
  also said Chinese police confiscated lockets containing photos of
  Karmapa from monks in the Tibetan capital Lhasa's Lugug neighbourhood.
  
  Robbie Barnett, a Tibet scholar at Columbia University called the
  Chinese move as "surprising" and of significant concern because
  China's official policy on Karmapa is he can return to Tibet anytime.
  
  "It's not totally inconceivable that there may be two policies: 'He
  can come back, we are not condemning him publicly.  But you are no
  longer allowed to have pictures,'" Barnett told RFA.
  
  ~~~~~~

Rapid industrialization - > warming -> rapid melting of Himalayan snows  = rains + flooding.  Now,  cut down all the trees on the slopes  = 

•   Pakistan floods worst in recorded history, worldwide coverage in mainstream media

•   Aug 06/10: Cloudburst in Ladakh, also on the Western side of Himalaya, in India:

  •  Josh Schrei reports to The Huffington Post (Aug 16th)
     

•   Drukchu (Zhouqu county) in Gansu province is a traditional Tibetan region of Amdo.

  • Aug 12/10, Phayul:   http://www.phayul.com/news/article.aspx?id=27951&article=Tibet+landslide+death+toll+rises+to+1%2C117%2C+with+627+still+missing&t=1&c=1

1st North American Kagyu Monlam, Montreal, June 24-27, 2010 

                                                       Karmapa's representative was Tsegar Tulku Rinpoche.  Also attending:  Lama Tashi Dondup, Lama Pema Tsewang, Lama Kunsang, Lama Rabten Tsering, Lama Karma Puntsok, Lama Yeshi Losal, Lama Tenzin Dakpa and Lama Karma.  Lama Tsering from the Vancouver centre was the wonderful umdze ("choirmaster.")