Word: worldly
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...least. The controversy stems from a single paragraph in Chapter 10 of the report's second section, which claimed that glaciers in the Himalayas were receding faster than in any other part of the world, and that "if the present rate continues, the likelihood of them disappearing by the year 2035 or perhaps sooner is very high if the Earth keeps warming at its current rate." Glaciologists have been doubtful of that 2035 date since the report came out. Although they are melting, there are tens of thousands of Himalayan glaciers, and it's hard to imagine them all disappearing...
...from a peer-reviewed scientific paper but from an interview conducted in 1999 by New Scientist magazine with the Indian glaciologist Syed Hasnain. The article, which included a "speculative" claim by Hasnain that the Himalayan glaciers could vanish by 2035, then became part of a 2005 report by the World Wildlife Fund - and that report, apparently, became the source for the IPCC claim. For his part, Hasnain says he was misquoted in the New Scientist article and claims that he had said that only a subset of the Himalayas' glacial cover might be gone in 40 years...
...definitely melting - and that will have a serious impact on the billions of people in Asia who depend at least partially on Himalayan meltwater. Yao Tandong, head of China's Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research, has done on-the-ground research on the Chinese side of the Himalayas - the world's biggest collection of ice outside the two poles - and reported last year that by the end of the century, as much as 70% of the mountain range's glaciers could disappear. And far from providing evidence against climate change, nearly all alpine glaciers worldwide that have been tracked have...
With the new anthology Best European Fiction 2010 (Dalkey Archive Press; 421 pages), edited by Chicago-based writer Aleksandar Hemon, our literary world just got wider. Hemon, an award-winning author who was born in Sarajevo and did not begin writing in English until he was in his early 30s, is an excellent guide to the European sensibility. And Best European is an exhilarating read. With stories from 35 nations and regions from Albania to Wales, it's like a Eurail pass that lets you tour a continent's worth of psychological landscapes. Trying to take in all of them...
...powerful stuff going on in Denmark. "Bulbjerg," by Naja Marie Aidt, tells of a family outing derailed by an accident, then by the revelation of betrayal. Before things started going south, the father had planned to show his son a bit of Danish history, a German bunker from World War II. "We were supposed to have had a nice little talk about the Occupation," he notes. The emotions unleashed in this tale couldn't be contained in any nice little talk. They are painfully universal. Yet you know exactly where in the universe you are. This is the hallmark...