Scientist debunks ‘NASA doomsday climate scenario’ for Bangladesh
July 6, 2008
A leading Bangladeshi researcher on climate change has dismissed as an overstatement the doomsday projections that Bangladesh could ‘disappear under the waves by the end of the century.’(The Newage)The gloomy prediction, attributed to the US space agency NASA, was made in a recent report in the British daily the Independent.
Dr Monirul Qader Mirza, a co-author of last year’s reputed Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change reports, suggests that the 25-metre sea level rise, as predicted by the Independent report, could be an exaggeration and had been denied by NASA.
Writing in the editorial page of today’s issue of New Age, Mirza warns that Bangladesh will nonetheless face widespread devastation for a much smaller rise in sea levels as predicted by the Nobel Peace prize-winning IPCC.
‘The 25-metre sea level rise is inappropriately cited in the Independent in the name of NASA and certainly entire Bangladesh is not going to go under water by the end of this century’, writes Mirza in his article.
A report by Johann Hari published in the Independent newspaper on June 20 observed, ‘Bangladesh, the most crowded nation on earth, is set to disappear under the waves by the end of this century’, and attributed the 25-metre sea level rise projection to reputed NASA scientist Dr James Hansen.
According to Mirza, the NASA scientist responded to his queries on this projection via email in which he wrote: ‘I have made no such projection…it is hard to say how much would occur by 2100 – it could be a few metres’.
‘In my long association with the IPCC, I have not come across any literature that has particularly projected a 25-metre sea level rise by 2100,’ writes Mirza.
Mirza, who is currently working at the University of Toronto in Canada, however, warns that ‘impacts of sea level rise on land and water, crops, livestock, human health and livelihood would be significant’, even if the extent of such a rise was far less.
Scientists in Bangladesh have also questioned the veracity of the 25-metre sea level rise projection with many viewing it as ‘too extreme’.
‘Although there may be scope for upwardly adjusting the IPCC projections, I think the scientific basis of a 25-metre sea level rise projection would be quite shaky’, said Mozaharul Alam, a research fellow at the Dhaka-based Bangladesh Centre for Advanced Studies
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