Global cooling

It is not often that residents of Mumbai get an opportunity to wear their woollies or show off their pashmina shawls. Mumbai’s winter is a bit of a joke, over before it begins, with little more to show than a nip in the air for a few days. But this year has been different, very different.

Not only here, but all over India, even the world, winter is showing an unusually sharp bite this time round. In Mumbai, plunging temperatures have been at the lowest in nearly 40 years.

In north India and Delhi, more used to tough winters than Mumbai, temperatures have reached a five-year low. Why, even in parts of southern China, snow is causing havoc.

Is this an anomaly? The question arises because global warming has moved on to the global agenda of governments and politicians ever since the release of the reports of the

Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). It erroneously led many to believe that henceforward there would be no winters to speak of. To disprove it as it were, winter has struck back with vengeance.

Is this a freak winter, or an early sign of an impending ice age? Though influential scientific opinion favours the theory of rising temperatures due to greenhouse gas emissions of the reckless lifestyle of the last century and more, there is a scientific minority putting forward the thesis that it is time for an ice age to return — warm interludes usually last for about 10,000 to 15,000 years.

And our time is up. It is being reckoned that about 13,000 years have already lapsed since the last ice age and greenhouses gases might hasten the next.

Even if the truth is that firm conclusions are not available either way and all that scientists can offer is an intelligent inference based on available evidence, it is quite clear that pollution is palpable and depleting glaciers and melting ice in the polar seas raise serious questions that cannot be brushed aside.

‘Extreme’ weather conditions — floods like Mumbai’s July 26 of 2005, Hurricane Katrina, heat waves in Europe killing thousands — are part of the global warming predictions.

Whatever the truth and implications of the big questions and big answers, we are left to cope with the cold that creates unbearable conditions, especially for the poor. The authorities are usually unprepared to deal with the plight of the poor, especially the homeless because there are no night-shelters, and the idea of a soup kitchen is almost non-existent.

Disaster management is imperative. Until then, we live in our monkey caps and listen to our mothers’ advice as we shiver and even enjoy this spell before Mumbai’s usual heat and humidity set in.