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.

Cultural Genocide

The Dalai Lama calls for an international probe into
cultural genocide in Tibet, as China cracks down
with violence.

Big Trouble in Tibet

What's really going on in Tibet is not precisely known, but it's likely to be very, very bad. Protests against what the Dalai Lama called "cultural genocide" have resulted in threats and violence by the Chinese government. According to Tibetan exile groups in India ( who "have provided some of the only reporting" from Tibet "since last Monday" said an ABC story), many have been killed.

"People have been saying they're shooting our people like dogs," Tenzin Norgay, the spokesman for the Tibetan Center for Human Rights and Democracy, told ABC News, citing his sources inside Tibet.

The Times of London is reporting close to to 1,000 Tibetans are under arrest. Now the Dalai Lama says if Tibetans engage in violence he will resign.

Meanwhile, the Chinese government is accusing the Dalai Lama of ordering the rebellion, charging as well that it is an attempt to stop the Olympics from being held in China. China is also blocking YouTube so that Chinese can't see the only video coming out of Tibet. So the situation doesn't look like it's going to get better soon, and may get a great deal worse.

Over the recent past, China has been busily destroying ancient Tibetan structures, especially those associated with Buddhism, and turning cities like Lhasa into perverse imitation Tibetan shopping malls for tourists. They've apparently murdered thousands of Buddhist monks in the process.

China has proven that capitalism and totalitarian iron-fisted rule work pretty well together. They make most of what Americans buy, and they've financed the Bushite wars and tax cuts for the wealthy by buying up federal government debt. So it's no wonder that the Bushites recently removed China from the list of the world's top ten human rights violators.