A day after I criticised Hindustan Times’ glaring omission of Al Gore’s speech on climate change, the paper carries a bold feature on global warming as if trying to compensate. But is it really informed by climate science?

Hindustan Times ran this extraordinarily bold full page feature in today’s paper

I made the entry on HT’s censorship of Gore’s speech on Sunday evening. It was published at four places online and was sent to a bunch of prominent personalities — Dr. R. K Pachauri, Sunita Narain, Bittu Sehgal, Malini Mehra, Barkha Dutt — as well as HT editor Vir Sanghvi and three HT correspondents.

Today (Tuesday), the paper carried a bold story on global warming.

It’s hard to say that this was in response to my write up but it does seem likely.

• For one, the full-page feature is very loud and bold (see larger version of the above image) with a massive headline and a huge graphic disproportionate to the small content the story carried.
• Second, such an aggressively promoted feature on global warming has not come out in HT since last year when the IPCC report came out and Indian print media woke up to this issue.
• Most important indication is that this is relatively a much smaller story. It was released by the BBC two days ago and Google News has hardly 20-30 mentions of it, none of which are from outside UK. Compare that with 1000+ mentions of the Gore story from all across the world that HT did not publish.

It’s as if they were trying to compensate! (more…)

Learn more about Indian Youth Summit on Climate Change.

P.S: Download higher resolution version of the above poster (3.6 MB PDF) and stick them up in your school, colleges etc or copy this image and the link and email it out to your friends.

The leading national daily keeps the Indian public in the dark about Gore’s historic energy challenge by refusing to make any mention of it.

Despite Al Gore’s Rock Star status, certain media organisations seem to have a thing or two against him. In the U.S. they have Fox News and in India it looks like Hindustan Times is keen to take on that role.

When Gore spoke in Washington on Thursday on the challenge to abandon fossil fuels, New York Times reported that the plan goes beyond even the most audacious ones. Bill McKibbon, journalist and climate activist went a step further when he said Gore deserved “the prize you get once you’ve won the Nobel.” Nasa’s leading climate scientist James Hansen called it “the turning point that is needed.”

So how did Fox News report the challenge? Fox’s reporting focused not on Gore’s call but his personal emissions. Its reporter stood outside the Gore event and counted the number of minutes Gore’s driver left the car on idle with the AC on to keep it cool when Gore and wife Tipper returned (it ran on idle for an earth destroying 20 minutes! The horror!).

Editors at Hindustan Times went a step further by pretending that Gore never spoke.

What Does HT Have Against Informed Public Opinion On Climate Change in India?

This isn’t the first time Hindustan Times has negatively influenced the Indian public on climate change front. I consider deliberate omission of an important global event from its reporting as a negative influence. There are many many examples of omission on this front in the past. But there are also examples of deliberate negative influence. In early April, HT ran two ridiculous stories challenging man made global warming and discrediting the IPCC.

I exposed those stories on my blog and am currently suing the paper in the Press Council of India for publishing them. Its editor and correspondent have been served notices and I can’t wait for the proceedings to begin. Have collected a wealth of evidence to share.

But let’s give them some benefit of doubt and see if this omission was really intentional or caused by some other reason. Maybe it was too late for Friday’s paper. Maybe they didn’t have enough space. Maybe it wasn’t relevant for Indian readers. Let’s look at each of these reasoning.

(more…)

Why Gore’s “Generational Challenge to Repower America” changes everything.

Rock Star Al Gore (formerly a politician but now rivaling a rock star in his popularity), pulled a great performance in Washington DC this week when he got on to the stage and sang “Gimme 100% baby.”

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, Al Gore delivered a landmark speech on Thursday in which he proposed an audacious target of generating 100% U.S. electricity from renewable energy resources by 2018.

Having been frustrated for years over lack of vision on this issue from all of our leaders, the news had an electrifying effect.

Prior to Gore, no one has had the courage to propose such a humongous target. Not the biggest environmentalists, not the doomsday scientists, no journalist, no engineer. The closest someone has come is Lester Brown. In his book Plan B 3.0 he argues for a complete switch to renewables (largely wind power) and an eventual 80% reduction in emissions by 2020.

But even Lester Brown acknowledges that his plan is guided not by political feasibility but the necessity of such a target. Gore’s plan on the other hand is unapologetically bold. He argues that not only is it feasible, it’s also attractive as it will create employment and will pay for itself several times over. Besides, Gore’s target betters Brown’s by two years. Every other plan or proposal talks about 2030 or 2050 targets. Even an organisation as radical as the Greenpeace wouldn’t have thought of proposing anything as audacious as this.

This is leadership.

Exactly What’s Needed

And this is exactly the kind of leadership we need. Every few days a new report or evidence appears raising alarm about the extent of changes to our climate while our politicians are busy sleeping or playing the blame game. When we do hear of solutions and plans, they are piecemeal solutions, half measures and plans that are guided by outdated science.

Not A Technological Challenge

Some reports are calling Gore’s plan unrealistic or outright crazy arguing that it’s impossible. Well, perhaps they should meet executives of Ausra, the Australian company now based in U.S which is building Gigawatt scale solar thermal plants using a new technology that’s cheaper than 2020 cost projections of the current one. Or maybe it’s T Boone Pickens they should be meeting who’s investing a billion dollars to install world’s largest wind farm in Texas.

Perhaps they should pay a visit to Greg Watson of Green and Gold Energy who’s installing hundreds of MW of concentrator photovoltaic solar farms around the world that produce energy at three times the efficiency of traditional solar panels and at less than 40% of the cost. Or maybe they need to learn about Blue Energy which has orders worth thousands of MW of their tidal energy turbine platform for the oceans that also works as a bridge.

Gore did not create this target out of thin air. As he said in the speech, he met with engineers, scientists, and CEOs and had consultations over “solutions summits”. One such expert was Paul Gipe whom Gore met in January this year. When asked about Gore’s target, he said, “Ten years is certainly an aggressive target, but many experts [including himself] who consulted with Gore have said that it is achievable.”

As someone who has been tracking emerging renewable energy solutions around the world, I came to conclude some time back that this is NOT a technological problem. We have all the technology today to take this issue head on. What we lack is the political courage. And this is what Gore has attempted to infuse in the leadership by setting up what others are calling an impossible target.

Great Timing

Before Gore gave the speech, fellow Democrats were complaining that it was poorly timed. They thought the party would be seen as “caring more about polar bears than Americans who have had to pay record prices for gasoline.” Actually, there couldn’t have been a better timing for Gore’s challenge.

As Gore said in his speech, rising price of fossil fuels have made renewables more attractive than ever before. Those of us who care more about the environment than the economy have been watching rising energy prices with much glee. Each Dollar per barrel of oil price rise translates directly into reduced consumption of oil and reduced consumption of everything else that gets expensive.

At the same time it also makes renewable cost competitive as the gap between their prices narrows down. So this is absolutely the right time to make the transition to clean energy. As price of oil gets higher — it’s projected to be $200/barrel before the end of this year — things will only get better.

(more…)

A series of writings that review the National Action Plan on Climate Change.

The country’s most important policy document that will determine how it deals with climate change is here. The National Action Plan on Climate Change (NAPCC) released by Prime Minister Mr. Manmohan Singh a little over two weeks ago is a historic document as it purports to address a challenge that is grappling humanity.

In a series of posts over the next few weeks, I will attempt an in-depth step by step analysis of the NAPCC, covering all its contents: principles and approach, each of the eight missions individually, their implementation, as well as areas that are conspicuously absent from the policy.

In my first entry, I will talk about the history of the plan, its scope & implications and how it was was received in the country and internationally. I will be publishing this over the weekend and will continually update this post with links to subsequent parts.

This entry was also made on Orange Hues blog.