It's not only global warming, but also the encroachment of humans on shrinking river valleys which is leading to disasters in India. This was stated by Dr Dhruv Sen Singh from the Centre of Advanced Study in Geology, University of Lucknow, who presented a research paper based on the Uttarakhand flood tragedy. He said: "The valley and channels of rivers are shrinking and vacated land is getting available for human settlement, which are mostly unplanned, and therefore, obstructing the original path of rivers leading to high risk of Uttarakhand (2013) and Kashmir (2014) type of rain-led devastation."
He said that very heavy rainfall and cloud bursts had occurred in the past as well but loss of human life was less. However, now it is going up due to haphazard growth of population in the vacated river beds. He questioned the claims of climate experts and the existing theories and stated that earth has seen the global warming cycles since its origin and in fact the earth's temperature had seen the highest rise during the cretaceous period when humans didn't exist. He also said that we have not learnt any lessons from the previous disasters because in India there is no connect between the researchers and policy makers.
Delhi's National Physical Laboratory scientist Rajesh Agnihotri, who also presented a paper, stated that after 1990 India witnessed a rise in the average temperature. Coincidentally, he added, the average rainfall has also increased in most parts of country in this period, excluding Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Kerala and the north-eastern states which have witnessed decreased rainfall in last two decades.
Rejecting the hype around global warming, Agnihotri who studies India specific weather changes, said, "The average temperature of India from 1960 to 90 was nearly 18.6 degrees Celsius which is considered to be the "normal period" in climate science. This has gone up by 1.1 degrees in past two decades. Meanwhile, the rainfall in most part of India went up by more than 7%. This is happening due to strong atmospheric circulation of heat and difference in land-ocean temperature, which leads to higher humidity and more precipitation of monsoon."
He also pointed out that the early monsoon intensity (May-June) is increasing over northwestern Himalayas (Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh).
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