Heard These? Probably Not.

Two bad news stories you probably haven't heard or seen or read: one of them very bad, and the other astonishingly bad.

There's an ongoing heat wave in India that has killed thousands. It's become the fifth deadliest heat wave in history. The Minister for Earth Sciences of India noted that this heat plus the predicted failure of this year's annual monsoons after last year's complete failure, indicates that climate change is involved.

"So, let us not fool ourselves that there is no connection between the unusual number of deaths from the ongoing heat wave and the certainty of another failed monsoon,” said Dr. Harsh Vardhan. He recalled President Obama’s candid statement on the three-year-running drought in California which has ruined that state’s fruit crop.

He pointed out that the Indian monsoon is known to be heavily dependent on oceanic, atmospheric and land surface conditions. The drastic changes brought about through change of the character of land and resultant atmospheric pollution are definitely influencing the monsoon. Dr Harsh Vardhan remarked, “Scientists till now had not considered the local implications of global change. Think global act local is happening now.”

That's the very bad story.  The possibly worse story--though no present deaths are involved--is a new study predicting that global heating is melting glaciers in the Himalayas so fast that by century's end their volume will be decreased by 70 to 90%.

Like other key areas of the world, the effects on local populations will be immense:

The food and livelihoods of more than a billion people living in Asia would suffer greatly by drastic glacial retreat in the Himalayas, a report by The Guardian says. Both the generation of hydroelectric power and agriculture would be severely affected. And, in addition to a dramatic reduction in meltwater, glacial retreat also can trigger a chain of events leading to avalanches and catastrophic floods, the authors say.

But that isn't the end of it.  For reasons not entirely understood, the Himalayas (especially near Tibet) are important to the world's weather.  The area greatly influences the atmospheric tides that govern global weather and climate in real time.  So in addition to local effects of the climate crisis, we're seeing the possibility of global consequences from local effects.

But of course all that isn't nearly important as the big stories of the day, like multimillionaire Caitlyn Jenner and granny panties.