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Whole Trouble – Troubles of Tibet Trouble My Consciousness

Tibet Consciousness – Trouble in Tibet

**TIBET CONSCIOUSNESS – GLOBAL WARMING: GRASSLANDS FAIL TO THRIVE DUE TO WARMING AND LACK OF PRECIPITATION.**

It is with a sense of deep pain I share an article titled “TROUBLE IN TIBET” published by NATURE, international weekly Journal of Science. Tibetans are paying a heavy price for Tibetan Plateau shoulders the burden of environmental degradation contributed by Red China’s industrial growth and advancement. Red China is responsible for reckless land management policies and for disrupting traditional lifestyles of Tibetan nomads.

Trouble in Tibet troubles my heart. I have several serious concerns about Tibet, the Land, the people, and the Government. The Institution of Dalai Lama is Tibet’s Government and it was forced into exile in March, 1959. Tibetans living in exile have the opportunity to participate in elections and choose their own representatives who run Tibetan Government-in-Exile. Tibetans living in occupied Tibet have no access to Government that represents Tibetan people. The global community of nations should not waste any more time and take action to uplift Tibetans from their troubles.

Rudra Narasimham Rebbapragada
Ann Arbor, MI 48104-4162 USA
SPECIAL FRONTIER FORCE

nature.com

Nature

International weekly journal of science

Trouble in Tibet

Rapid changes in Tibetan grasslands are threatening Asia’s main water supply and the livelihood of nomads.

JANE QIU 13 January 2016

**TIBET CONSCIOUSNESS – TIBET IN TROUBLE. TIBETAN GRASSLANDS ARE DISAPPEARING RAPIDLY AND RED CHINA IS ACCOUNTABLE FOR THIS ENVIRONMENTAL CATASTROPHE.**

Photo Credit. Kevin Frayer/Getty

A group of young Tibetan monks huddles on a degraded pasture on the Tibetan Plateau.

In the northern reaches of the Tibetan Plateau, dozens of yaks graze on grasslands that look like a threadbare carpet. The pasture has been munched down to bare soil in places, and deep cracks run across the snow-dusted landscape. The animals’ owner, a herder named Dodra, emerges from his home wearing a black robe, a cowboy hat and a gentle smile tinged with worry.

“The pastures are in a bad state and lack the kind of plants that make livestock strong and grow fat,” says Dodra. “The yaks are skinny and produce little milk.”
His family of eight relies on the yaks for most of its livelihood — milk, butter, meat and fuel. Dodra was forced to give up half of his animals a decade ago, when the Chinese government imposed strict limits on livestock numbers. Although his family receives financial compensation, nobody knows how long it will last.

“We barely survive these days,” he says. “It’s a hand-to-mouth existence.” If the grasslands continue to deteriorate, he says, “we will lose our only lifeline”.

The challenges that face Dodra and other Tibetan herders are at odds with glowing reports from Chinese state media about the health of Tibetan grasslands — an area of 1.5 million square kilometres — and the experiences of the millions of nomads there. Since the 1990s, the government has carried out a series of policies that moved once-mobile herders into settlements and sharply limited livestock grazing. According to the official account, these policies have helped to restore the grasslands and to improve standards of living for the nomads.

But many researchers argue that available evidence shows the opposite: that the policies are harming the environment and the herders. “Tibetan grasslands are far from safe,” says Wang Shiping, an ecologist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ (CAS) Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research (ITPR) in Beijing. “A big part of the problem is that the policies are not guided by science, and fail to take account of climate change and regional variations.”

The implications of that argument stretch far beyond the Tibetan Plateau, which spans 2.5 million square kilometres — an area bigger than Greenland — and is mostly controlled by China. The grasslands, which make up nearly two-thirds of the plateau, store water that feeds into Asia’s largest rivers. Those same pastures also serve as a gigantic reservoir of carbon, some of which could escape into the atmosphere if current trends continue. Degradation of the grasslands “will exacerbate global warming, threaten water resources for over 1.4 billion people and affect Asian monsoons”, says David Molden, director general of the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) in Kathmandu, Nepal.

Such concerns propelled me to make a 4,700-kilometre journey last year from Xining, on the northeastern fringe of the plateau, to Lhasa in the Tibetan heartland (see ‘TREK ACROSS TIBET’). Meeting with herders and scientists along the way, I traversed diverse landscapes and traced the Yellow and Yangtze Rivers to their sources. The trip revealed that Tibetan grasslands are far less healthy than official government reports suggest, and scientists are struggling to understand how and why the pastures are changing.

**TIBET CONSCIOUSNESS – TIBET IN TROUBLE. TIBETAN GRASSLANDS FACING RAPID DECLINE; CHINESE MISMANAGEMENT CAUSED ENVIRONMENTAL DISASTER.**

Fenced in

It began to drizzle soon after we set off from the city of Xining on a stretch of newly built highway along the Yellow River. As our Land Cruiser climbed onto a 3,800-metre-high part of the plateau, the vista opened to reveal rolling hills blanketed by a thick layer of alpine meadow, resembling a gigantic golf course. We passed herds of sheep and yaks, white tents and nomads in colourful robes — along with barbed-wired fences that cut the rangeland into small blocks.

This part of the Tibetan Plateau, in a region known as Henan county, is blessed with abundant monsoonal rains every summer. The herders who live here are able to maintain healthy livestock and can make a decent living. “We have plenty to go around, and the livestock are well taken care of,” says herder Gongbu Dondrup.

But life has been different since the government began to fence up grasslands around a decade ago, says Dondrup. Before that, he took his herd to the best pastures at high elevations in the summer, and then came back down in the winter. Now, he must keep the yaks in an 80-hectare plot that the government assigned to his family. The pasture looks worn, and he is being pressed by the government to further downsize his herd. “I don’t know how long it can keep us going,” he says.

The fencing initiative is the latest of a string of Chinese grassland policies. After annexing Tibet in 1950, the young revolutionary Chinese republic turned all livestock and land into state properties. Large state farms competed with each other to maximize production, and livestock numbers on the plateau doubled over two decades, reaching nearly 100 million by the late 1970s. But in the 1980s, as China moved towards a market-based economy, Beijing swung to the other extreme: it privatized the pastures and gave yaks back to individual households, hoping that the move would push Tibetans to better manage their land and so boost its productivity.

Despite the privatization, nomads continued to use the rangeland communally — often in groups led by village elders. Then the government began to limit herds, and it built fences to separate households and villages. “This has totally changed the way livestock are traditionally raised on the plateau, turning a mobile lifestyle into a sedentary existence,” says Yang Xiaosheng, director of Henan county’s rangeland-management office.

The fencing policy does have merits when applied in moderation, says Yönten Nyima, a Tibetan policy researcher at Sichuan University in Chengdu. Because an increasing number of nomads now lead a settled life — at least for parts of the year — it helps to control the level of grazing in heavily populated areas, he says. “Fencing is an effective way to keep animals out of a patch of meadow.” Many herders also say that it makes life much easier: they do not have to spend all day walking the hills to herd their yaks and sheep, and if they go away for a few days, they don’t worry about the animals running off.

But the convenience comes at a cost, says Cao Jianjun, an ecologist at Northwest Normal University in Lanzhou. Fenced pastures often show signs of wear after a few years. In a 2013 study, Cao and his colleagues measured growth of the sedge species preferred by livestock in two scenarios: enclosed pastures and much larger patches of land jointly managed by up to 30 households. Despite similar livestock densities in both cases, the sedge grew twice as fast in the larger pastures, where animals could roam and plants had more opportunity to recover1. That matches the experience of Henan county herders, who say that their land sustains fewer animals than it has in the past.

Water worries

The future of the grasslands looked even bleaker as we left relatively well-to-do Henan county and ventured into the much higher, arid territory to the west. After 700 kilometres, we reached Madoi county, also known as qianhu xian (‘county of a thousand lakes’), where the Yellow River begins. Although this region gets only 328 millimetres of rain on average each year, about half of what Henan receives, Madoi was once one of the richest counties on the plateau — famous for its fish, high-quality livestock and gold mines.

Now, the wetlands are drying up and sand dunes are replacing the prairies, which means that less water flows into the Yellow River. Such changes on the plateau have contributed to recurring water shortages downstream: the Yellow River often dries up well before it reaches the sea, an event not recorded before 1970.

In 2000, China sought to protect this region, along with adjacent areas that give rise to the Yangtze and Mekong Rivers, by establishing the Sanjiangyuan (or Three-Rivers’ Headwaters) National Nature Reserve, an area nearly two-thirds the size of the United Kingdom.

Nearly one-tenth of the reserve area falls into core zones in which all activities, including herding, are prohibited. The government spends hundreds of millions of US dollars each year on moving nomads out of those core areas, constructing steel meshes to stabilize the slopes and planting artificially bred grass species to restore the eroded land. Outside the core regions, officials have banned grazing on ‘severely degraded grasslands’, where vegetation typically covers less than 25% of the ground. Land that is ‘moderately degraded’, where vegetation coverage measures 25–50%, can be grazed for half of the year.

**TIBET CONSCIOUSNESS – TIBET IN TROUBLE. TIBETAN PLATEAU GRASSLANDS REPLACED BY DRY, BARREN LAND.**

Jonas Bendiksen/Magnum

Near the headwaters of the Yellow River, lush grasslands have given way to sand dunes.

Such policies — and related initiatives to limit livestock numbers and fence off areas of pasture — have not been easy on the herders, says Guo Hongbao, director of the livestock-husbandry bureau in Nagchu county in the southern Tibetan Plateau. “The nomads have made sacrifices for protecting the grasslands,” he says. But he also says that the strategies have paid off. Guo and other officials point to satellite studies showing that the plateau has grown greener in the past three decades2. This increase in vegetation growth, possibly the result of a combination of grazing restrictions and climate change, “has had a surprisingly beneficial effect on climate by dampening surface warming”, says Piao Shilong, a climate modeller at Peking University.

But ecologists say that such measurements look only at surface biomass and thus are not a good indicator of grassland health. “Not all vegetation species are equal,” says Wang. “And satellites can’t see what’s going on underground.”

This is particularly important in the case of the sedge species that dominate much of the Tibetan Plateau, and that are the preferred food of livestock. These species, part of the Kobresia genus, grow only 2 centimetres above the surface and have a dense, extensive root mat that contains 80% of the total biomass.
Studies of pollen in lake sediments show that Kobresia and other dominant sedges emerged about 8,000 years ago, when early Tibetans began burning forests to convert them to grasslands for livestock3. The prehistoric grazing helped to create the thick root mat that blankets the vast plateau and that has stored 18.1 billion tonnes of organic carbon.

But Kobresia plants are being driven out by other types of vegetation, and there is a risk that the locked-up carbon could be released and contribute to global warming. Every now and then on the trip to Lhasa, we passed fields blooming with the beautiful red and white flowers of Stellera chamaejasme, also known as wolf poison. “It’s one of a dozen poisonous species that have increasingly plagued China’s grasslands,” says Zhao Baoyu, an ecologist at the Northwest Agriculture and Forestry University in Yangling. Zhao and his colleagues estimated that poisonous weeds have infested more than 160,000 square kilometres of the Tibetan grasslands, killing tens of thousands of animals a year4.

Herders also report seeing new grass species and weeds emerge in recent years. Although most are not toxic, they are much less nutritious than Kobresia pastures, says Karma Phuntsho, a specialist on natural-resource management at ICIMOD. “Some parts of the plateau may seem lush to an untrained eye,” he says. “But it’s a kind of ‘green desertification’ that has little value.”

In one unpublished study of the northeastern Tibetan Plateau, researchers found that Kobresia pastures that had gone ungrazed for more than a decade had been taken over by toxic weeds and much taller, non-palatable grasses: the abundance of the sedge species had dropped from 40% to as low as 1%. “Kobresia simply doesn’t stand a chance when ungrazed,” says Elke Seeber, a PhD student at the Senckenberg Natural History Museum in Görlitz, Germany, who conducted the field experiment for a project supported by the German Research Foundation (DFG).

“The policies are not guided by science, and fail to take account of climate change and regional variations.”

The changes in vegetation composition have important implications for long-term carbon storage, says project member Georg Guggenberger, a soil scientist at Leibniz University of Hanover in Germany. In moderately grazed Kobresia pastures, up to 60% of the carbon that is fixed by photosynthesis went into the roots and soil instead of the above-ground vegetation — three times the amount seen in ungrazed plots5. This underground organic carbon is much more stable than surface biomass, which normally decomposes within a couple of years and releases its stored carbon into the air. So a shift from Kobresia sedge to taller grasses on the plateau will ultimately release a carbon sink that has remained buried for thousands of years, says Guggenberger.

Critics of the grazing restrictions in Tibet say that the government has applied them in a blanket way, without proper study and without taking on board scientific findings. In some cases, they make sense, says Tsechoe Dorji, an ecologist at the ITPR’s Lhasa branch, who grew up in a herder family in western Tibet. “A total grazing ban can be justified in regions that are severely degraded”, he says, but he objects to the simple system used by the government to classify the health of the grasslands. It only considers the percentage of land covered by vegetation and uses the same threshold for all areas, without adjusting for elevation or natural moisture levels.

“Pastures with 20% vegetation cover, for instance, could be severely degraded at one place but totally normal at another,” says Dorji. This means that some of the grasslands that are classified as severely degraded are actually doing fine — and the grazing ban is actually hurting the ecosystem. “Having a sweeping grazing policy regardless of geographical variations is a recipe for disasters,” he says.

Fast forward

China’s grazing policy is only one of several factors responsible for such damaging changes, say the researchers. Pollution, global warming and a rash of road-building and other infrastructure-construction projects have all taken a toll on the grasslands.

Ten days after leaving Xining, we caught a glimpse of Tibet’s future when we arrived at Nam Tso, a massive glacial lake in the southern part of the plateau. Here Dorji and Kelly Hopping, a graduate student at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, have been turning the clock forward by surrounding small patches of grassland with open-topped plastic chambers that artificially raise the temperature. These experiments are important because Tibet is a hotspot in terms of climate change; the average temperature on the plateau has soared by 0.3–0.4 °C per decade since 1960 — about twice the global average.
In trials over the past six years, they found that Kobresia pygmaea, the dominant sedge species, develops fewer flowers and blooms much later under warming conditions6. Such changes, says Dorji, “may compromise its reproductive success and long-term competitiveness”.

“Having a sweeping grazing policy regardless of geographical variations is a recipe for disasters.”

At the experimental site, the artificially warmed pastures have been taken over by shrubs, lichens, toxic weeds and non-palatable grass species, says Hopping. But when the researchers added snow to some heated plots, Kobresia did not lose out to the other plants, which suggests that the loss of soil moisture might be driving the shift in species. Higher temperatures increase evaporation, which can be especially potent at high elevations. “This is not good news for species with shallow roots”, such as the Kobresia favoured by livestock, she says.
Piao says that “this interplay between temperature and precipitation illustrates the complexity of ecosystem responses to climate change”. But researchers have too little information at this point to build models that can reliably predict how global warming will affect the grasslands, he says. To fill that gap, Wang and his colleagues started a decade-long experiment in 2013 at Nagchu, where they are using heat lamps to warm patches of grassland by precise amounts, ranging from 0.5 °C to 4 °C. They are also varying the amount of rainfall on the plots, and they are measuring a host of factors, such as plant growth, vegetation composition, nutrient cycling and soil carbon content. They hope to improve projections for how the grasslands will change — and also to determine whether there is a tipping point that would lead to an irreversible collapse of the ecosystem, says Piao.

Plateau prognosis

A fortnight into the trip, we finally arrived at the outskirts of Lhasa. At the end of the day, herders were rounding up their sheep and yaks in the shadows cast by snow-capped peaks. They and the other pastoralists across the plateau will have a difficult time in coming decades, says Nyima. Climate change was not a consideration when grassland polices were conceived over a decade ago, and so “many pastoralists are ill prepared for a changing environment”, he says. “There is a pressing need to take this into account and identify sound adaptation strategies.”

As a start, researchers would like to conduct a comprehensive survey of plant cover and vegetation composition at key locations across different climate regimes. “The information would form the baseline against which future changes can be measured,” says Wang. Many scientists would also support changes to the grazing ban and fencing policies that have harmed the grasslands. Dorji says that the government should drop the simplistic practice of ‘one policy fits all’ across the plateau and re-evaluate whether individual regions are degraded enough to merit a ban on grazing. “Unless the pastures are severely degraded, moderate grazing will help to restore the ecosystems,” he says.

But scientists are not banking on such reforms happening soon. Policies in Tibet are driven less by scientific evidence than by bureaucrats’ quest for power and funds, says a Lhasa-based researcher who requests anonymity for fear of political repercussions. Local officials often lobby Beijing for big investments and expensive projects in the name of weiwen (meaning ‘maintaining stability’). Because resistance to Chinese control over Tibet continues to flare up, the government is mostly concerned with maintaining political stability, and it does not require local officials to back up plans with scientific support, says the researcher. “As long as it’s for weiwen, anything goes.”

But officials such as Guo say that their policies are intended to help Tibet. “Although there is certainly room for improvement in some of the policies, our primary goals are to promote economic development and protect the environment,” he says.

Far away from Lhasa, herders such as Dodra say that they are not seeing the benefits of government policies. After we finish our visit at his home, Dodra’s entire family walks us into the courtyard — his mother in-law spinning a prayer wheel and his children trailing behind. It has stopped snowing, and the sky has turned a crystal-clear, cobalt blue. “The land has served us well for generations,” says Dodra as he looks uneasily over his pasture. “Now things are falling apart — but we don’t get a say about how best to safeguard our land and future.”

Journal name: Nature Volume: 529, Pages: 142–145 Date published: (14 January 2016) DOI: doi :10.1038/529142a A related story at SciDev.Net explores how climate change will affect Tibetan herders.

References

Cao, J., Yeh, E. T., Holden, N. M., Yang, Y. & Du, G. J. Arid Environ. 97, 3–8 (2013). Article Shen, M. et al. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 112, 9299–9304 (2015). Article PubMed ChemPort Miehe, G. et al. Quat. Sci. Rev. 86, 190–209 (2014). Article Lu, H., Wang, S. S., Zhou, Q. W., Zhao, Y. N. & Zhao, B. Y. Rangeland J. 34, 329–339 (2012). Article Hafner, S. et al. Glob. Chang. Biol. 18, 528–538 (2012). Article Dorji, T. et al. Glob. Chang. Biol. 19, 459–472 (2013). Article PubMed

From nature.com

Droughts threaten high-altitude Himalayan forests 27 January 2015 Tibetan plateau gets wired up for monsoon prediction 01 October 2014 Double threat for Tibet 19 August 2014 Floods spur mountain study 04 September 2013 Thawing permafrost reduces river runoff 06 January 2012 China: The third pole 23 July 2008 Nature Geoscience Nature Climate Change

From elsewhere

Third Pole Environment International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research

Author information

Affiliations

Jane Qiu is a freelance writer in Beijing. Her trip across the Tibetan Plateau was supported by the SciDev.Net Investigative Science Journalism Fellowship for the Global South, which was funded by a grant from the International Development Research Centre, Ottawa, Canada.

Author details

Jane Qiu. Nature ISSN: 0028-0836 EISSN: 1476-4687 © 2016 Nature Publishing Group, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited. All Rights Reserved. partner of AGORA, HINARI, OARE, INASP, CrossRef and COUNTER

**TIBET CONSCIOUSNESS – TIBET IN TROUBLE. SUGE LA PASS AT 5440 METERS IN ELEVATION. GRASSLANDS DESTROYED.**

**TIBET CONSCIOUSNESS – TROUBLE IN TIBET. PLATEAU GRASSLANDS DISAPPEARING AT RAPID PACE.**

**TIBET CONSCIOUSNESS – TIBET IN TROUBLE. YAKS GRAZING ON THE TIBETAN PLATEAU. GRASSLANDS DISAPPEARING DUE TO MANAGEMENT FAILURE.**

**TIBET CONSCIOUSNESS – TIBET IN TROUBLE. GRASSLANDS OF TIBETAN PLATEAU IN SERIOUS TROUBLE.**

Whole Trouble – Troubles of Tibet – Tibetans Under Constant Surveillance

Trouble in Tibet – Tibetans Under Constant Surveillance

**TROUBLE IN TIBET – TIBETANS UNDER SURVEILLANCE. HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS IN OCCUPIED TIBET.**

Red China extended indefinitely a village-based Tibet Surveillance Program which in its essence is a continuous Human Rights violation.

Rudra Narasimham Rebbapragada
Ann Arbor, MI 48104-4162 USA
SPECIAL FRONTIER FORCE

CHINA DIGITAL TIMES

Tibet: Surveillance & Living Buddhas

Human Rights Watch reports that authorities in Tibet are extending a village-based surveillance scheme that was originally scheduled to end in 2014, creating a permanent system of cadre teams to maintain political stability in the region:

“The Chinese government’s decision to extend its Tibet surveillance program indefinitely is nothing less than a continuous human rights violation,” said Sophie Richardson, China director. “The new normal is one of permanent surveillance of Tibetans.”

[…] The purpose of the village-based cadre teams was initially described as improving services and material conditions in the villages, but, according to the Party leader of the TAR in 2011, their primary requirement was to turn each village into “a fortress” in “the struggle against separatism,” a reference to support for Tibetan independence and the Dalai Lama.

This was done by setting up new Communist Party organizations in each village, establishing local security schemes, gathering information about villagers, and other measures. The teams were also required to carry out re-education with villagers on “Feeling the Party’s kindness” and other topics.

[…] The village-based teams also “screen and mediate social disputes,” which involves acting to settle and contain any disputes among villagers or families, because of official concerns in China that small disputes might lead to wider unrest or “instability.” One objective is to prevent villagers from presenting petitions to higher level officials.

[…] In August 2015, a statement posted on a government Tibetan-language website said that the TAR authorities had called for work teams “to be constantly stationed at their village committees.” It added that “on hearing that village-based-cadre work was to continue, the rural masses were overjoyed, saying that this was one of the Party and government’s best policies to benefit rural areas.”

Read Human Rights Watch’s 2013 report on the surveillance grid in Tibet, the reported use of monks’ cellphones as monitoring devices, and more on surveillance in the region, via China Digital Times.

Meanwhile, the BBC reports that the Chinese State Administration for Religious Affairs has established the country’s first database of “authentic living buddhas,” complete with photos, personal details, and license numbers, that has been made available to the public for verification purposes.

Beijing has taken the unusual step of concerning itself with matters of reincarnation by releasing the names, photographs and locations of 870 “verified” buddhas on the website of the State Administration for Religious Affairs, Xinhua news agency reports. It’s a move that’s been praised by one of the men who features on the list. “As a living buddha, I feel genuinely happy about it,” Drukhang Thubten Khedrup tells the state-run news agency.

According to China’s religious affairs agency, the system has been inaugurated to counter “fake” buddhas who are undermining Tibetan Buddhism by cheating believers out of cash.
However, the spiritual cataloguing scheme has already been criticised as a means of further controlling Tibetan affairs. “This living Buddha database and the whole policy toward reincarnation is clearly a pre-emptive move by the government to control what happens after this Dalai Lama,” Amnesty International’s Nicholas Bequelin told Time magazine in December 2015, when the list was first announced. It’s also seen as a means of confirming state choices for other religious appointments.

At China Real Time, Olivia Geng and Josh Chin note that fake living buddhas were described as a national security threat on state broadcaster CCTV last year.They also point out that the Dalai Lama is not among those on the new register, despite Beijing’s repeated insistence that he must reincarnate, and that it has the right to identify his reincarnation.

Elsewhere, Jane Qiu looks at the negative impacts that a series of government grazing restrictions and fencing policies have had on the Tibetan grasslands and the health of the surrounding environment. From Nature:

Read more on threats to grasslands in Tibet and elsewhere, including a 2013 Human Rights Watch report on the forced settlement of Tibetan herders, via China Digital Times.

January 19, 2016 12:04 AM
Posted By: CINDY

China Digital Times is supported by the Berkeley Counter-Power Lab | 2011 Copyright © China Digital Times | Powered by WordPress

**TROUBLE IN TIBET – TIBETANS UNDER SURVEILLANCE – HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATION IN OCCUPIED TIBET.**

**TROUBLE IN TIBET – TIBETANS UNDER SURVEILLANCE. RED CHINA’S PROPAGANDA AGENTS MOVE INTO EVERY TIBETAN VILLAGE.**

**TROUBLE IN TIBET – TIBETANS UNDER SURVEILLANCE. HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS N OCCUPIED TIBET.**

Whole Trouble – The Troubles of Tibet – Communist Regime vs Climate Change

Trouble in Tibet – Climate Change is no Secret

Tibet is in deep trouble; the trouble called ‘Climate Change’ is no Secret, the trouble caused by Communist Regime occupying Tibet is indeed the bigger of the two troubles confronting Tibet. Regime Change in Tibet will resolve the problem of ‘Climate Change’.

Rudra Narasimham Rebbapragada
Ann Arbor, MI 48104-4162 USA
SPECIAL FRONTIER FORCE

EURASIA REVIEW – A JOURNAL OF ANALYSIS AND NEWS

NEW METHOD UNLOCKS CLIMATE CHANGE SECRETS FROM TIBETAN ICE

ISSN 2330-717x

The Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau lies between the Himalayan range to the south and the Kunlun Range to the north. Map by Lencer, Wikipedia Commons.

By EURASIA REVIEW December 19, 2015

Identifying forest fire molecules in the Tibetan ice could give us an insight into how human activity is contributing to climate change and melting glaciers. A new study published in Talanta presents a method to help scientists identify forest fire molecules in Tibet.

The researchers behind the new method, from the Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research in China, say their work will enable scientists to spot the molecules produced by burning forests more easily. This will help them understand the history of fires in the region, adding to the picture of how humans are contributing to climate change.

The Tibetan Plateau is one of the cleanest regions in the world. It is a huge area, covering around 1000km north to south and 2500km west to east, in western China and India. The glaciers supply water to people in surrounding countries and are critical for people’s survival. However, they’re retreating at an alarming rate, putting the water supply in jeopardy for more than 1 billion people.

Climbing temperatures are contributing to the disappearance of the glaciers. But previous research has also pointed to molecules in the air called carbonaceous aerosols as another cause of the glaciers melting. Carbonaceous aerosols are commonly produced by burning fossil fuels. However, almost half of the carbonaceous aerosols in south Asia are produced when people burn biomass, such as trees.

Studying the aerosols trapped in the ice of the glaciers can give scientists insights into the history of biomass burning and how it is related to climate change and glacial melting. For the new study, the researchers developed a method to help scientists identify a molecule called levoglucosan, which can identify carbonaceous aerosols that came from biomass burning.
Researchers often look for levoglucosan in snow and ice in Antarctica and the Arctic. However, ice from the Tibetan Plateau contains many more complex molecules, such as sugar and sugar alcohol, making it much harder to spot the levoglucosan.

“Carbonaceous aerosols can tell the story of biomass burning in a region, helping us understand more about how human activity has shaped glaciers over time,” explained Mr. Chao You, lead author of the study from the Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research. “But it’s quite difficult to identify the molecules that tell us when these aerosols were released, so we wanted to come up with a better method to use in Tibet.”

Usually, researchers use a technique called High Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC) to identify levoglucosan in snow and ice samples. However, because of the insoluble particles in the Tibetan ice, using this method without pre-treating the samples can actually harm the system. Furthermore, levoglucosan is present at such low concentrations in the Tibetan ice that standard methods often can’t identify the molecules.

Mr. You and his colleagues developed a method that can detect levoglucosan at tiny concentrations in snow and ice samples. The researchers first melted the ice, filtered it and mixed it with acetonitrile. They then analyzed the mixture using chemistry analysis called ultra-performance liquid chromatography combined with triple tandem quadrupole mass spectrometry. They then analyzed the levoglucosan in the sample.

The method is very sensitive: the team could identify levoglucosan at a concentration of only 110 nanograms per liter of ice. They could use the method with small samples of only 0.5ml. Also, the method is not just suitable for Tibetan ice, but for samples from any low and middle latitude glaciers around the world.

“I am interested in finding more evidence of biomass burning in Tibetan glacier snow and ice. To do this, we improved and tested this new method for identifying levoglucosan quickly and accurately in Tibetan ice and snow,” explained Mr. You. “Our method can reveal more detailed information about the environmental process and changes that happened in Tibetan glaciers.”

This research was supported by the National Scientific Foundation of China.

Whole Trouble – Dalai Lama will not Reincarnate in Land where his portraits are confiscated

Trouble in Tibet – Dalai Lama Portraits Confiscated

Confiscation of Dalai Lama portraits in Occupied Tibet is a sign and symptom of deep Trouble in Tibet. To give relief from Trouble, Tibet needs Freedom From Occupation. The Dalai Lama will not reincarnate in a Land where his portraits are confiscated.

Rudra Narasimham Rebbapragada
Ann Arbor, MI 48104-4162 USA
SPECIAL FRONTIER FORCE

DALAI LAMA PORTRAITS CONFISCATED IN CHINA: REPORT

February 3, 2016 12:40 AM

A man prays below a portrait of the Dalai Lama at Kirti Monastery in Aba, a Tibetan area of China’s Sichuan province, on December 9, 2015 (AFP Photo/Benjamin Haas)

Beijing (AFP) – A Chinese province with a large Tibetan population has ordered shopkeepers to hand in portraits of the Dalai Lama, state-run media said Wednesday, quoting Beijing experts likening the Nobel laureate to executed Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

Sichuan in the southwest, which includes several ethnically Tibetan areas, set up a “law enforcement squad” of cultural bureau personnel, police and other officials to enforce the drive, reported the Global Times, which is close to the ruling Communist party.

The aim was to “crack down on pornography and illegal publications, which include portraits of the Dalai Lama” ahead of the Lunar New Year, it quoted Gou Yadong, director of the provincial publicity department, as saying.

People were more than welcome to put on show pictures of the country’s past and present leaders, he added, referring to former heads of the ruling party.
The Global Times also cited Lian Xiangmin, of the China Tibetology Research Centre in Beijing, as saying that for Chinese people, hanging his picture was the same as displaying Saddam Hussein’s image would be for Americans.

The former Iraqi leader was executed in 2006 after being convicted of crimes against humanity, while the Dalai Lama, who fled Tibet after a failed uprising against Chinese rule, was awarded the 1989 Nobel Peace prize.

The move in Sichuan comes as Beijing steps up a campaign against the spiritual leader, who is still widely revered by Tibetans.
Beijing brands him a dangerous separatist, despite his repeated statements condemning violence, and in Tibet it tightly controls images of him as part of what many Tibetans see as official repression of their religion and culture.

China denies repression of minorities and says its massive investment in Tibet has brought development to a formerly poverty stricken region.
Some Tibetan areas in Sichuan had seen laxer enforcement in recent years, with business owners displaying his portrait in shops.

**TROUBLE IN TIBET – DALAI LAMA PORTRAITS CONFISCATED IN OCCUPIED TIBET. 1987 Photography by Herb Ritts.**

Whole Trouble – Freedom is in Short Supply in Tibet

TROUBLE IN TIBET – FREEDOM IS IN SHORT SUPPLY

Trouble in Tibet – Freedom is in Short Supply

Science Daily published an article titled, “Water Supplies in Tibet Set to Increase in the Future.” When Freedom is in Short Supply, there is no hope for Water Supplies in Tibet to increase.

Rudra Narasimham Rebbapragada
Ann Arbor, MI 48104-4162 USA
SPECIAL FRONTIER FORCE

**Comparison Pictures of Rongbuk Glaciers. Trouble in Tibet – Freedom is in Short Supply**

ScienceDaily

Water supplies in Tibet set to increase in the future —

ScienceDaily Water supplies in Tibet set to increase in the future
Date: January 20, 2016

Source: University of Gothenburg

Summary: The Tibetan Plateau has long been seen as a “hotspot” for international environmental research, and there have been fears that water supplies in the major Asian rivers would drastically decline in the near future. However, new research now shows that water supplies will be stable and may even increase in the coming decades.

Researcher Deliang Chen.

The Tibetan Plateau has long been seen as a “hotspot” for international environmental research, and there have been fears that water supplies in the major Asian rivers would drastically decline in the near future. However, new research now shows that water supplies will be stable and may even increase in the coming decades.

A report by the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) from 2007 suggests that the glaciers in the Himalayas will be gone by 2035. This statement was questioned and caused a great stir.

“This mistaken claim and the subsequent debate pointed to a need for a better understanding of the dynamics of climate, glaciers and future water supplies in the region,” says Deliang Chen, Professor in the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Gothenburg.

River flows stable or increasing Since the statement by IPCC in 2007, the Tibetan Plateau has been a focus of international environmental research.

A research group led by Professor Deliang Chen at the University of Gothenburg, in close collaboration with researchers from the Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, headed by Professor Fengge Su, has studied future climate change and its effect on the water balance in the region. The great Asian rivers have their source on the Plateau or in the neighbouring mountains.

The researchers recently published a study in Global and Planetary Change which modelled the water flows upstream in the Yellow River, the Yangtze, the Mekong, the Salween, the Brahmaputra and the Indus. The studies include both data from past decades and simulations for future decades.

The results show that water flows in the rivers in the coming decades would either be stable or would increase compared to the period from 1971-2000.
Affects a third of the world’s population The Tibetan Plateau is the highest and most extensive area of high land in the world, and what happens there affects water resources for almost a third of the world’s population.

Dr. Tinghai Ou, who was responsible for the climate projections in the study, has commented that increased precipitation and meltwater from glaciers and snowfall are contributing to increased water flows in the region.

“This is good news because social and economic development in the surrounding areas, including China, India, Nepal and other countries in Southeast Asia, are closely tied to climate change and access to water. But the fact that the glaciers are shrinking in the region could be a concern in the longer term, and we must keep a close eye on what is happening with global warming,” says Professor Deliang Chen.

Story Source:
The above post is reprinted from materials provided by University of Gothenburg. The original item was written by Carina Eliasson. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.

Journal Reference:

F. Su, L. Zhang, T. Ou, D. Chen, T. Yao, K. Tong, Y. Qi. Hydrological response to future climate changes for the major upstream river basins in the Tibetan Plateau. Global and Planetary Change, 2016; 136: 82 DOI: 10.1016/j.gloplacha.2015.10.012

University of Gothenburg. “Water supplies in Tibet set to increase in the future.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 20 January 2016. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/01/160120113706.htm>.

Himalayan Glaciers Retreating at Accelerated Rate in Some Regions: Consequences for Water Supply Remain Unclear

Sep. 12, 2012 — Glaciers in the eastern and central regions of the Himalayas appear to be retreating at accelerating rates, similar to those in other areas of the … read more

Copyright 2015 ScienceDaily or by third parties, where indicated. All rights controlled by their respective owners.

Whole Prayer – Prayer for Freedom to Blossom in Tibet

Peach Blossoms – Prayer for Freedom to Blossom in Tibet

Tibetans need courage and freedom to be the people they were made to be. They need humility to lay aside progress or development granted by occupation. I ask the Lord of Compassion to give wings to Tibetans and they shall fly to experience the Joy of Freedom.

Rudra Narasimham Rebbapragada

SPECIAL FRONTIER FORCE

Clipped from: http://usa.chinadaily.com.cn/a/201803/28/WS5abb4f62a3105cdcf6514dd7_1.html

Photo taken on March 27, 2018 shows peach blossoms at the Gala peach blossom scenic area in the Baiyi district of Nyingchi, Tibet. [Photo/Xinhua]

Whole Waiting – Be Patient, There Will be a Tibetan Spring

Waiting for the Tibetan Spring with Optimism shared by Richard Gere

WORLD PARLIAMENTARIANS CONVENTION ON TIBET HELD IN OTTAWA, CANADA, 2012. Carl Gershman, President of the National Endowment for Democracy, Washington, DC, Professor Jayadeva Ranade, Distinguished Fellow with the Centre for Air Power Studies, New Delhi, with Richard Gere, Chairman of the International Campaign for Tibet.

Richard Gere shared his sense of optimism and expressed his hope for a Tibetan Spring and encouraged Tibetan supporters to wait with patience. At Special Frontier Force, I recognize Patience and Perseverance as part of our military strategy.

If not Tibetan Spring, I am waiting for a Red China “Meltdown” that would eventually lead to the Tibetan Spring. The term ‘meltdown’ describes a situation in which a rapid rise in the power level of a nuclear reactor, as from a defect in the cooling system, results in the melting of the fuel rods and the release of dangerous radiation and may cause the core to sink into the earth. ‘Meltdown’ also refers to a sudden decline or breakdown in a situation or condition. I am really impressed by Red China’s expanding military, economic, and political power. At the same time, I recognize inherent weakness of Red China’s Expansionism. In my analysis, there is no person, and there is no national entity that can save Red China from a catastrophic ‘Meltdown’, a sudden decline, a rapid breakdown of her Evil Power.

Rudra Narasimham Rebbapragada
Ann Arbor, MI 48104-4162, USA

Special Frontier Force, Establishment 22, Vikas Regiment

Richard Gere: ‘There Will Be a Tibetan Spring Eventually,’ We Have to Be Patient

July 4, 2015 | 09:21AM PT

‘I am welcomed by the Chinese people, but not by the Chinese government’

LEO BARRACLOUGH

KARLOVY VARY, Czech Republic — Richard Gere predicted a Tibetan Spring at a press conference on Saturday at the Czech Republic’s Karlovy Vary Film Festival.
The actor, who received the festival’s Crystal Globe for outstanding contribution to world cinema on Friday, was addressing a question regarding Chinese control of Tibet, which it has occupied since an invasion in 1950.

Gere is a follower of the Dalai Lama, the India-based spiritual leader of Tibet, and an advocate for the liberation of Tibet. He disputed a suggestion from a journalist that he was not welcome in China. “I am welcomed by the Chinese people, but not by the Chinese government. I haven’t been able to (visit China) since 1993. But you guys can understand that. The Czech Republic understands Communism very well,” he said.

Gere rejected the suggestion that there were negotiations going on behind the scenes that would lead to an improvement in relations between the Tibetan Buddhists in exile and the Chinese government.

He was asked what would happen when the Dalai Lama, who is 80 years old on July 6, dies and the Tibetan Buddhists sought out the next Dalai Lama. Gere referred to an episode in Tibetan history when the Panchen Lama, the second-highest Tibetan lama, spoke out against the Chinese treatment of Tibetans in 1989, and died in “mysterious” circumstances soon thereafter. When the Panchen Lama’s successor, a 6-year-old boy, was named by the Tibetan Buddhists, he was “kidnapped” by the Chinese Communist authorities, Gere said, and “has not been seen since.” The Chinese then selected their own Panchen Lama, whom the Tibetans regard as “bogus,” Gere said. This scenario could be repeated when the Dalai Lama dies, Gere claimed.

“There is a fear — which is based in reality — that the Chinese will try to co-opt the next incarnation of the Dalai Lama. In fact the Chinese Communist Party has said that it is only up to the Chinese to decide who the Dalai Lama will incarnate as,” he said. “So there is a drama going on now about who will decide who is the next Dalai Lama.”

He continued: “The Dalai Lama has said: ‘Well, first of all, he is not going to incarnate inside of China if it is still controlled by the Chinese Communists.’ In any event it is up to him where he, and how he incarnates, not the Chinese Communists, so there is this absurd line of reasoning and declarations from the Communist Party.”

Gere added that the Czechs, because of their experience of living under Communism, could identify with such “absurdity.” “You have such experience with the absurdities of a Communist party, so you’ll understand the position of the Tibetans quite well. It will change eventually as it changed here, and there will be a Prague Spring in Tibet,” he said, referring to the anti-communist uprising in Czechoslovakia in 1968, that was unsuccessful, and the Velvet Revolution in 1989, which ended communist rule in the country. “Things will change,” Gere said. “We have to be patient and we have to keep Tibetan culture alive in the meantime, because the Chinese are doing their best to completely eradicate it.”

Filed Under:

Karlovy Vary Film Festival
Richard Gere

Whole Trouble – “The World We Make” is not the World Tibet Wants

Trouble in Tibet – “The World We Make”

**The Dalai Lama, shown here speaking to the Wisconsin Legislature in 2013, will be back in Madison on March 9, 2016 to participate in a gathering billed as “The World We Make.”**

As of today, our World is in awful shape. Actually, we did not make this World. Just as in the case of Tibet, troubles are imposed upon innocent people who simply mind their own business without causing inconvenience to others. There is no choice other than that of remaking this World to give Peace and Justice to all people.

Rudra Narasimham Rebbapragada
Ann Arbor, MI 48104-4162 USA
Special Frontier Force, Establishment 22, Vikas Regiment

THE CAP TIMES

Madison, Wisconsin

Bill Berry: Wake up, Wisconsin, to impact of Dalai Lama, climate change

BILL BERRY | state columnist Jan 25, 2016 JOHN HART – State Journal

The Dalai Lama, shown here speaking to the Wisconsin Legislature in 2013, will be back in Madison on March 9 to participate in a gathering billed as “The World We Make.” An international spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama has worked for decades to building better understanding among the scientific and spiritual communities. John Hart/State Journal111

News that didn’t but should have stopped the presses as we came out of post-Christmas hibernation:

Welcome back: The Dalai Lama will make his 10th visit to Madison come March 9, as reported last week in Madison media. Beyond the Madison market, chances are the word won’t get out much on the visit from this international spiritual, ethical and moral leader. Its too bad. His international impact is immense. He’ll participate in a Capitol Theater event billed as The World We Make, a gathering of world leaders in science, health care and the media, according to its sponsor, the Center for Healthy Minds at UW-Madison. Among his many accomplishments, the Dalai Lama has been able to build better understanding among the scientific and spiritual communities.

The connection between the Dalai Lama and UW-Madison is well known in the Madison area. Outstate, not so much. But people might like to know that the connection has led to vibrant research on the healthy mind at the center, headed by Richard Davidson, and elsewhere on the UW campus. The simple idea that we can learn about humans by studying the healthy mind is transformational. Its also part of a vibrant body of research that stretches well beyond the Madison campus.

Bill Berry of Stevens Point writes a semimonthly column for The Capital Times. billnick

About the columnist

Bill Berry is a self-employed writer and editor who contributes to state and national publications. His Capital Times columns cover an array of topics, but he specializes in conservation, agriculture and sustainable land use.

Whole Problem – The Great Problem of Tibet is on the Back Burner

The Great Problem of Tibet is on the Back Burner

During the month of March, Tibet Awareness Month, I regret to report that The Great Problem of Tibet is still on the Back Burner. But, I am adamantly hopeful for the word Evil means Doom, Apocalypse, Calamity, Cataclysm, and Disaster. The global attention for Tibet has shrunk but the Evil Red Empire could be rushing ahead to meet its unavoidable Fate. My hope comes from a Biblical Prophesy.

How China has shrunk global attention for Tibet and the Dalai Lama — Quartz

Clipped from: https://qz.com/1565178/how-china-has-shrunk-global-attention-for-tibet-and-the-dalai-lama/

***The global attention for Tibet has shrunk but the Evil Red Empire could be rushing ahead to meet its unavoidable Fate. My hope comes from a Biblical Prophesy.***

March is a sensitive month in Tibet. In 1959, an uprising led to a bloody crackdown by Chinese forces, culminating in the 23-year-old Dalai Lama’s escape to India on March 17, where he arrived after two weeks of apprehension over his fate. Protests marking the Tibetan revolt were put down in 1989, and most recently in 2008, months before China was set to showcase itself to the world with the opening of the Beijing Olympics.

It’s hard to imagine such acts of defiance taking place today. In 2011, Beijing further tightened its chokehold on the autonomous region under the leadership of new Tibet Communist Party secretary Chen Quanguo (paywall), who implemented a vast array of security measures, including the incarceration and “re-education” of those who had returned from listening to the Dalai Lama’s teachings in India. Tibetans were also forced to adapt their culture to party ideology and to learn how to “revere” science, part of Beijing’s ongoing propaganda campaign that portrays its rule in Tibet as a benevolent exercise in modernization and anti-feudalism. Ten years ago today (March 28), the Chinese instituted Serfs’ Emancipation Day as a holiday to celebrate its program.

Reuters

Smoke rises from burning buildings below the Potala Palace in the Tibetan capital Lhasa during protests on March 14, 2008.

“To some extent, China has been very successful in dealing with Tibet,” said Tsering Shakya, an academic at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.

Beijing is applying the Tibet model to another minority considered to pose a danger to the state. In 2016, Chen became party secretary in the Xinjiang region of northwest China, where his Tibetan policies are largely seen as the foundation for repression of the Uyghur minority. Large-scale re-education camps hold hundreds of thousands of Muslims as Uyghur cultural and religious practices face systematic erosion.

From Kundun to Rock Dog

Advocates hope that growing international awareness over Xinjiang will help rekindle the world’s attention toward Tibet, which has dwindled amid the Chinese Communist Party’s relentless efforts to reshape the global conversation about the region.

Perhaps the starkest manifestation of that is in the arts. Tibet, once a cause célèbre in Hollywood as the subject of films such as Kundun and Seven Years in Tibet—in which Brad Pitt played the role of an Austrian mountaineer who tutored the young Dalai Lama—is today almost nowhere to be seen on screen. Actor Richard Gere, one of the most well-known celebrities to support Tibetan independence, said in 2017 that he has been shut out of major productions because of his outspokenness.

Reuters/Yuri Gripas

Nancy Pelosi talks to Richard Gere at a memorial event for Kasur Gyari, former special envoy of the Dalai Lama to the US, March 12, 2019.

When Tibet is still visible, said Seagh Kehoe at the University of Leicester, it is often in a watered-down and totally depoliticized fashion, as in the animated Rock Dog, a 2016 joint US-China production about a Tibetan mastiff who becomes a music star. Self-censorship over Tibet can be seen at work in London as well, with a West End theater suspending performance of a play about Tibet last year reportedly at the urging of the British Council, the UK’s international cultural organization, which is partly government funded. Following accusations of censorship by its playwright and apologies by the theater, Pah-la is now due to be staged next month.

Shaping the narrative on campus

Universities are another important battleground in Beijing’s attempt to mold its narrative. Campus activism in an earlier era was generally pro-Tibetan. That’s changing today with the ballooning number of Chinese students abroad—over 600,000 now compared with fewer than 50,000 in the late 1990s.

Chinese authorities “see overseas students as allies in their ongoing efforts to counter regime opponents” including groups sympathetic to Tibet, Xinjiang, Taiwan, and the Falun Gong, according to a report (pdf) last year by the Wilson Center, a Washington, DC-based think tank. The report detailed attempts by Chinese officials to put pressure on institutions to cancel invitations to the Dalai Lama and to bring more Chinese delegations to US universities to espouse the Communist Party’s line on Tibet.

Chemi Lhamo, a Tibetan student who was elected last month as a student president at the University of Toronto, received thousands of threatening Instagram messages from Chinese students. The student union decided to close her office out of concern for her safety. Chinese officials in Canada denied having anything to do with the incident or a case in which an Uyghur speaker was disrupted by Chinese students at McMaster University who had reportedly sought advice (paywall) from the consulate in Toronto. Chinese diplomats in Canada have praised the actions of students in both instances as being “patriotic.”

“Slow violence” gets less attention

Draconian restrictions on travel by Tibetans, foreign diplomats and journalists have made getting disseminating information from the region immensely more difficult.

Ever-tightening security has eliminated visible, large-scale displays of protest. The “optics of urgency” spotlighting the Xinjiang situation, such as satellite photos of camps and reporting by journalists on the ground, are missing from the Tibet narrative, wrote Gerald Roche, an anthropologist at La Trobe University in Melbourne. The “slow violence” that characterizes the plight of Tibet today, Roche added, makes it harder to get global attention.

Ahead of the 60th anniversary of the uprisings in Tibet, Chinese authorities further tightened control, restricting even foreign tourists from traveling there. Meanwhile, a white paper from China’s State Council on Tibet released yesterday (March 27) boasted of “democratic reform” over the past six decades, including a chapter titled “The People Have Become Masters of Their Own Affairs.”

During the month of March, Tibet Awareness Month, I regret to report that The Great Problem of Tibet is still on the Back Burner. But, I am adamantly hopeful for the word Evil means Doom, Apocalypse, Calamity, Cataclysm, and Disaster. The global attention for Tibet has shrunk but the Evil Red Empire could be rushing ahead to meet its unavoidable Fate. My hope comes from a Biblical Prophesy.

Reuters/Thomas Peter

Armed police attempt to prevent a photographer from taking pictures at the entrance to the village of Taktser, known in Chinese as Hongya, where the Dalai Lama was born in 1935, Qinghai province, China March 9, 2019.

Dramatic protests have continued. Since 2009, Tibetans have been self-immolating as a form of protest, with the act spreading from nuns and monks to laypeople. The International Campaign for Tibet’s latest count of self-immolations totals 155, with the last of the three known to have occurred in 2018 taking place in December. International media coverage, however, has largely disappeared. “We have some 150 cases of self-immolation, but for all, I know it could be 300,” said Kevin Carrico at Monash University in Australia. “Even for people who pay attention to this situation, we don’t really know what’s happening.”

The debate over the next Dalai Lama

Sophie Richardson, China director at Human Rights Watch in Washington, said that spotlighting China’s human-rights abuses in Xinjiang can reinforce mutual support between diaspora Uyghur and Tibetan groups. There’s a common “core pathology” underlining Beijing’s actions in both places, including the “erasing of cultural identities and practices,” she said. Lhamo, the Tibetan student, told Quartz that a growing focus of her activism now involves building ties and sharing information with Uyghurs, Taiwanese, and the Falun Gong.

Advocacy groups have also welcomed renewed pressure by the US on Beijing. Congress passed the Tibet Reciprocal Act in December, which denies entry to the US any Chinese official who blocks Americans from going to Tibet. Matteo Mecacci, a former lawmaker in Italy and president for the International Campaign for Tibet, said the bill signals “enduring, bipartisan support for Tibet” in the US. The law requires annual reports detailing access to Tibet for Americans, with the first published this week.

AP Photo/Ashwini Bhatia

The Dalai Lama smiles as he sits on his chair at the Tsuglakhang temple in Dharmsala, India, Feb. 27, 2019.

The fight over the Dalai Lama’s succession—and China’s obsessive control over it—could also return Tibet to headlines in the coming years.

Amid a flurry of attention this month marking the leader’s 60th anniversary in exile in Dharamsala, the 83-year-old Dalai Lama said in an interview that his next incarnation could be found in India, adding that Beijing is likely to appoint its own successor whom “nobody will trust.” Beijing, which consistently maintains that the Dalai Lama is a separatist, promptly reiterated that the selection of the next Tibetan spiritual leader must follow Chinese law.

Whole Awareness – Less Snow and Less Freedom in Tibet – A Recipe for Disaster

Tibet Awareness – The Third Pole of Earth is vanishing – A Recipe for Disaster

**Whole Awareness – Less Snow and Less Freedom in Tibet – A Recipe for Disaster**

A report published in Climate Dynamics suggests that less snow in Tibet means more heatwaves in Europe. How about less Freedom in Tibet? What repercussions it would have on rest of the world? As Doomsayer of Doom Dooma, I predict that less ‘Freedom’ in Tibet is a recipe for a great disaster. A calamity, a catastrophe, and a disaster will strike Red China forcing her out of Tibet.

Rudra Narasimham Rebbapragada
Ann Arbor, MI 48104-4162, USA
Special Frontier Force. Establishment 22. Vikas Regiment

Less snow in Tibet means more heatwaves in Europe

Worsening heatwaves in Europe and north-east Asia are to thinner snow cover on the Tibetan Plateau, highlighting its key role in global weather systems, a study by Chinese scientists finds

**TIBET AWARENESS – GLOBAL WARMING – CLIMATE ACTION. RED CHINA REFUSES TO ACCEPT THE CAUSE OF GLOBAL WARMING. RED CHINA IS USING DECEPTION AND PROPAGANDA INSTEAD OF ADDRESSING CORE ISSUES.**

Chinese scientists found that reduced snow cover on the Tibetan Plateau triggers high pressure over southern Europe and northeast Asia, reducing cloud formation and pushing up temperatures.

Wednesday 7 October 2015

Recent summer heatwaves in Europe and northeast Asia have caused massive water shortages and a large number of deaths. But the mechanism behind these extreme weather events is not fully understood.

Scientists at China’s Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology now say that decreasing snow cover in the Tibetan Plateau could be playing an important role.
Professor Wu Zhiwei and her team used monthly snow cover and air temperature data from the past fifty years to build a global circulation model.

Their findings show that reduced snow cover on the Tibetan Plateau triggers high pressure over southern Europe and northeast Asia, reducing cloud formation and pushing up temperatures. Warmer and drier conditions in turn further inhibit cloud formation, intensifying local heat waves, says their paper, published recently in Climate Dynamics.
With further snow loss projected in the future, “Tibetan Plateau snow cover may play an increasingly significant role in shaping the Eurasian heat waves in the next decades,” the Chinese scientists conclude.

Summer snow cover on the Tibetan plateau has already decreased significantly over the past 50 years with rising levels of global greenhouse gases. The region is warming at almost three times the global average.

Global climate connections

As climate models grow more sophisticated and complex, scientists have identified a set of long-distance atmospheric connections – or “teleconnections” – linking climate and weather in regions that are far apart.

These teleconnections also explain why rising sea temperatures in the Pacific Ocean affect summer rainfall in North America and why there are major global climate anomalies when an EL NINO occurs.

The findings are significant for southern Europe and north-east Asia, where heatwaves have become more frequent and more severe over the past decades.
In 2003 Europe was caught off guard as sweltering temperatures brought the hottest summer since records began, leading to 70,000 deaths. In July – August 2010, another heat wave caused an estimated 56,000 deaths in western Russia.

In northern China heatwaves have led to major drinking water shortages for over half a billion people.

Tibet – the weather maker

Scientists agree that as the largest and highest plateau in the world, Tibet plays a key role in the global climate system. But many of the details remain a mystery.
The authors of the paper acknowledge their findings contain a number of caveats – including the lack of high quality and long-term climate data for the Tibetan Plateau.
The plateau and the Hindu Kush Himalayas are together often called the third pole because they hold the world’s largest stock of ice outside the poles. The plateau’s remoteness, high altitude and harsh conditions mean that even basic weather stations are few. Satellite data only exists from the 1970s and is plagued by errors because of the lack of calibration from ground observations.

Earlier studies have shown how heavy snowfall over the Tibetan Plateau can both weaken and prolong the duration of the summer monsoon system in the region. Another study linked greater winter snow cover in Tibet with warmer winters in Canada.

The Nanjing study adds fresh insights: “The findings in this paper are very important for understanding the causes to the increased frequency of heatwaves in Eurasia,” said Wen Zhou from the Guy Carpenter Asia-Pacific Climate Impact Centre, City University of Hong Kong. She is leading a separate team to study the influence of high summer temperatures in southeast China on the Asian monsoons.

Plugging the gap

China is trying to fill this data gap. Last year, government institutions launched a US $49-million initiative to wire up the plateau with sensors in an unprecedented attempt to understand its influence on climate — especially the Asian monsoons.

The Chinese effort could help to predict extreme weather — both in Asia and as far afield as North America — and give scientists a steer on how climate change affects these events.

The China Meteorological Administration and the National Natural Science Foundation of China has set up sensors on high towers and in the soil to monitor temperature and moisture and cloud formation, as well as deploying sensors mounted on weather balloons and unmanned aerial vehicles.