The Suckers At Delhi Government

An outdoor air purifying system made by Italian company Systemlife and installed at Connaught Place by NDMC is symbolic of cluelessness that prevails in the higher echelons of the government.

I returned home this morning, after an interview with a German researcher on Delhi government's climate initiatives, to find a newspaper report which made a perfect specimen for the central argument I tried to put across in the meeting -- the Delhi govt, just like its counterpart in the centre, has no clue what they are talking about, no clue about the scale of the climate crisis, what needs to be done and how ineffective will be their so-called plan.

The newspaper report I'm referring to touted "CP’s air cleaner than before" because of an outdoor air purifier installed there for the last month. You read that right, an outdoor air purifier.

I cannot believe this scam has survived over one month. When I first saw news reports last month, I was aghast at the collective ignorance of the government and the media. Certain at the same time that I'd see a report in the next few days citing an expert clarifying that this had no chance of making any discernable impact on air quality of the region. Surely, I thought someone would point out that you don't install air purifiers in open areas!

The emperor-has-no-clothes moment I was expecting has not only not arrived, but the emperor is on to another round of parade. The news today is covered by several newspapers. It apparently originated with this release from the PTI: "Air purifier station at Delhi a big success." The source cited is not an air monitoring agency but the company that did the installation.

The machine is claimed to have captured 2 kg of particulate matter but out of how much? All this claim proves is that the device does filter out the air it sucks but is it actually effective in reducing pollution of that region? What is the reduction in particulate matter (in ppm) measured by nearby monitors? If it impacts a limited localised region, how much precisely is that area?

Systemlife, the Italian company behind this technology publishes no specifications of their products on their website. The site contains no technical details and there is no mention of peer-reviewed scientific papers or independent studies that corroborate that its products meant for the outdoors improves air quality of a localised region.

Interestingly, the company's product page for Model Città, that was installed at CP, does not even make such a claim. All it says is that it cleans the air it sucks -- without specifying the quantity or the effect on the localised area. News reports from last month do provide an indication of capacity -- 10,000 cubic meter per hour.

10,000 m^3 capacity effectively means an area less than 23 meter long, 23 meter wide and 20 meter high (air we breathe)! That certainly wouldn't cover much of CP.

But this is assuming that air stands still over a given area, which of course it doesn't. The rate of air flow over a 100m distance at just 1 m/s wind speed at the height of 20 m is 72 Lakh cubic meter per hour (7,200,000 m^3/hr), according to Dr. Sarath Guttikunda, founder of UrbanEmissions.Info, a research unit meant to share information on air pollution and its management. This is taken from his blog post -- the only online reference I could find online where this scam has been exposed.

You don't need to be a scientist or a mathematician to know that air mixes rapidly in open areas. The question is, is our government incapable of both simple math and common sense? What about newspaper editors?

Proponents of the machine could argue that whatever little the machine is doing is still commendable. But that would be an argument made without any sense of scale. The scale in this case is like a 2.5 crore (which is what this machine cost) water purification system installed on the banks of Yamuna with a cleaning capacity of a home water purifier!

Sure, it may be cleaning 10 litres of polluted Yamuna water per hour, at the rate of 0.003 litre per second, but does it matter in a river with a flow of 8.5 million litres per second? That is the scale of con that is being perpetrated here.

The health chief of NDMC while launching the machine said that money does not matter when it comes to health of Delhi citizens. Systemlife intends to installl 100 such machines in Delhi. Ritika Modi, head of Uniglobe Travel South Asia, the Indian partner company of Systemlife, said every Indian city needs these machines.

At 250 crore for hundred machines that promise to be as effective as the proverbial drop in the ocean, I hope that better sense will previal with the government. Thankfully, the current installation is only a pilot one and the government says it will monitor air quality for three months before taking a decision. If the process is honestly followed there is no chance of it getting through.

The point is, the pilot was not needed had anyone done even the most rudimentary thinking. But I suspect the lure of a magical vaccum cleaner that sucks out all the city's pollution was too much to resist for any thought process.



Notes

The post was copied to:

• The German researcher
  
• Systemlife, the Italian company
  
• Ritika Modi, head Uni Globe Travel South Asia, Indian partner of Systemlife
  
• Delhi government (several individuals)
  
• Green-India
  
• Indian Youth and Climate Network
  
• Delhi Greens
  
• Dr. Sarath Guttikunda, Affiliate Assistant Research Professor at Division of Atmospheric Sciences, Desert Research Institute (Nevada, US) and founder UrbanEmissions.info. He's credited for the featured cartoon.

Top Five Reasons Why Apple's iPad is Revolutionary

People lamenting iPad's lack of "features" are discounting its user experience as well as the big picture change it represents.

[UPDATE 28-APR 2010: After finally spending hours with the device, reviewers at Engadget reluctantly admitted earlier this month that "it's a little bit revolutionary" indeed. Wall Street Journal's veteran tech reviewer Walt Mossberg went further in his March 31st review: "I believe this beautiful new touch-screen device from Apple has the potential to change portable computing profoundly, and to challenge the primacy of the laptop."

Meanwhile, Apple is so inundated with iPad orders within the U.S. that it has decided to postpone its international launch. Clearly, iPad is turning out to be as much of a success as this blog had predicted at its January unveiling when the tech community was almost unanimously focussed on its lack of "features" disregarding the user experience and the implications for personal computing.]

Apple's introduction of iPad has been received with mixed response. While many reviewers are excited about the device, most have expressed serious disappointment with the perceived lack of "basic features". Let's take reviews by Engadet that are representative of what tech bloggers are generally saying about this device.

Out of three of their editors who got to check the device hands on, Josh called it underwhelming and unimaginative, Ross said he couldn't justify buying this device while Chris Grant from Joystiq said iPad doesn't represent sea change in quality like the iPhone. Others were less forgiving. Darren calls it one of Apple's biggest misses. All bemoaned the lack of features they were expecting.

Many people perhaps expected a full-fledged computing device so I can understand some of the disappointment. But Apple never said what they were going to release and all the hype in the media and blogosphere in the weeks and months leading up to the event was creation of these very people who are now criticising the device for not living up to their expectations. When Jobs got on stage, he made it clear from that start that iPad lies somewhere between the laptop and smartphone.

With that said, in my view, characterising iPad as simply "an over-sized iPod touch" is what is really unimaginative. Failing to see beyond their "power" needs most reviewers have shown lack of thinking. They also demonstrate that they have learned nothing from the success of iPhone and iPod.

I think iPad goes far beyond in terms of what it offers today to users, what it represents for the future of portable computing, what it means for Apple as a company and what it can do for the publishing industry. To call the device revolutionary is not an exaggeration by any measure. Here's why:


#1 The User Experience

Success of a device of this kind is about the overall user experience and not about a few features here and there. It's not what it "can't do" but how it does the things it can.

Let's rewind by three years. Apple releases a smartphone that doesn't have any new "feature" and yet it explodes in sales. What happened? Can you name any single new feature that iPhone introduced when it debuted that no other phone had? Did you say, web browsing? Well, people had been using the web on their cell phones for ages. Email? That's what blackberry did. Touchscreen? Again, lots of phones had touchscreens even then. Camera? Music player? All of these were already standard features.

If you said multi-touch, that would be spot on but why have we forgotten about multi-touch now? How many mainstream computing device can you name -- be it a laptop, PC, Netbook or ebook -- that allows you to browse the web, access files on your computer, scroll lists and read a book using a specialised interface designed for multi-touch? Sure there are touchscreen tablets but neither are they mainstream nor do they carry multi-touch capability anything resembling the iPad.

Let's get back to iPhone, what was unique about it was its user experience. The way the interface flew when it touched your fingers. While most people drooled over the demo when Jobs first revealed the iPhone in his January 2007 keynote but by the time they got home they began to wonder what kind of cool aid were they drinking. Several tech bloggers wrote in the following days that there was nothing revolutionary about this Phone. All the iPhones features could be found on other Smartphones as well. After all, they pointed out, the iPhone even lacked many things they took for granted -- it couldn't forward a text message, couldn't record video, couldn't send an MMS, didn't have expandable memory and didn't come with a swappable battery.

Forty-two million iPhone sales later, it's clear that none of that mattered.

Nine years ago, iPod debut saw a similar response from parts of the tech community. "No wireless. Less space than [competition]. Lame," said the post on Slashdot. And again, 250 million iPods later, nobody's calling the device lame. Obviously, tech bloggers don't get that the user experience is king in software just as content is in media.

Why do we discount the user experience? For one, because it's an intangible. Image transitions, ease of scrolling, surfing the web, pinching and expanding photographs, accessing information with ease, accuracy of search results and the user interface in general aren't counted as "features" and "functionality" of a device in spec sheets unlike tangibles such as webcam, USB ports. And yet it's these intangibles that make the user experience and define how the tangible "features" of the device behave.

A mp3 player with a brand new interface to scroll down long lists or a smartphone with no new "feature" might look boring when you compare spec sheets - get them in your hand and it's an entirely different experience. Steve Jobs emphasised twice in his Keynote on Wednesday that it's one thing to hear about iPad and quite another to take it in your hands.

The reason many people aren't enamored by the device today is that they are used to multi-touch on their iPhone and its novelty value has long worn off. On phones, that is. Wait till they actually get to do the same things on a computing device. Although the iPad isn't a full fledged computer, if the videos are any indication, it does some of the key tasks exceedingly well.

Apart from the user experience of reading/ viewing/ browsing/ accessing content, the entertainment experience especially gaming is going to to be completely unmatched by devices of this kind. SGN Holdings is planning to bring "Xbox 360-quality 3D multiplayer game" to iPad. They are also said to be planning games that will let users "handle their iPhones like a Wii-like game controller for an iPad."

That is the kind of experience you can look forward on an iPad and this is why the iPad is revolutionary.


#2 The End of Laptop Form Factor

If the iPad does succeed in capturing a large market, and I have no doubt that it will, it'd be hard for Apple to limit the tablet form factor of the iPad to the current device. I see no reason why there can't be full fledged portable computing devices of 15" to 17" size in the tablet form factor ready to be used either as a touchscreen iPad or as desktop with standup monitor and split keyboard configuration or even as traditional laptop with removable wireless keyboard plus touchpad inside a tablet jacket.

While Apple hasn't made any explicit statements to this effect but its lead designer Jonathan Ive did offer hint of such future development when he said referring to the iPad: "this defines our vision, our sense of what's next."

After seeing how iPad works, it's really difficult to imagine that this will not happen. Weight of the device might be an issue for large screens but most people will still use it on some kind of a platform such as tabletop, kitchen counter or simply on their knees rather than holding it with one hand. The possibility of ending portable computing's most famous form factor of the last two decades, the laptop, is what makes the iPad revolutionary.


#3 Breaking The $500 Price Barrier (also called The Netbook Effect)

Figures released last month show that in 2009 while Laptops lost revenue by 7%, Netbooks grew 72% in sales and over 103% in units sold. The data clearly indicates that people are not just buying them as secondary machines but their primary computers -- a fact that "power users" (especially those who dominate tech blogs and media outlets and who were the first to crticise iPad as lacking "important features") might find hard to digest.

The point is, success of Netbooks amply demonstrates that if you give them a really low price consumers will happily ignore lack of few features.

Introduced in late 2007, a Netbook is a small form factor, low performance portable computer sans an optical disk which became a phenomenal and unexpected overnight success. Steve Jobs himself deningrated the Netbook in his Keynote when he said they are not better at anything. He's generally right if he's referring to the user experience. With low resolution screens, slower processors and cramped keyboards, netbooks leave a lot to be desired.

But even Jobs knows that netbooks are still good at one or two things. Portability and price. At around 10 inches in size and $300 in price, on average, Netbooks are 70% the size and 50% the price of traditional 15" Windows laptops. This -- the price in large part, and portability closely following -- explains their unprecedented rise to prominence.

It's easy to see that Apple has recognised these factors behind the phenomenal success of Netbooks because the iPad seems to be designed to compete in the same market with the same key characteristics. Starting at $499, the iPad is priced at a price-point which is precisely half-way through Apple's entry level laptop, the Macbook priced at $999. Not coincidentally, the iPad is also 10 inches in size.

By crossing the $500 price barrier and ensuring portability, Apple's iPad appears destined to experience the same explosion in sales that Netbooks are experiencing. This is why the iPad is revolutionary.


#4 The App Store

Here's another question for the skeptics: name another computer manufacturer that makes money from sale of third-party software written for their device, completely controls this software ecosystem and successfully thrwarts all competition. With over 140,000 apps, three billion downloads and Apple's infamous approval process with the golden clause that rejects any application with "duplicate functionality", the app store for iPhone is a money minting machine for Apple Inc.

About one third of all revenue generated from the app store goes into Apple's pockets. No other hardware maker has anything that comes close. And once again, we've gotten so used to it that we forget the genius of an invention it is for Apple.

Free from the limitations of a mobile device, the iPad will guarantee one thing for Apple, many many more new apps and zillions of downloads. If Apple discontinues the Macbook and Macbook Pro line and converts them into iPad's tablet form factor over the coming years, as I predict above, there will be serious temptation to continue with the app store's closed ecosystem model simply because it's just so profitable.

With the first closed ecosystem of applications for a major computing device in the iPad, Apple has just redefined the rules of engagement with its competitors like Dell and Microsoft. Neither of them are poised to respond likewise because unlike Apple, neither of them makes both software and hardware. This is what makes Apple's iPad revolutionary.


#5 Old Media Saviour

Finally, with the iPad, Apple is set to forever change how newspapers, periodicals and textbooks are read. While Jobs' keynote did not venture much beyond books, it's been widely reported that he's working closely with several bigtime publishers.

Old media has long been grappaling with new media and how best to employ it to their advantage. Yet, they have failed to make it work for them. Meanwhile, as news aggregators and free online news sites gain readership, real world newspapers' and magazines' subscriptions are falling, advertising rates decreasing and publishers are closing shops.

For the first time, they are provided with an opportunity. All of a sudden, print publishers get to be on a platform that can push them inside homes of people who have their credit card ready and who are accustomed to paying for consumption of media content and software. The number of payment transactions of songs, movies, TV shows and applications through the iTunes store and app store run in billions. Apple could possibly do to publishing what it did to the music industry. So a seriously troubled, if not dying entity now gets a good chance of revival. That's revolutionary.

Update: Digg this

About the date mark: While I started drafting this post on 28th Jan, it was first published on 1.30am [IST] 1st Feb 2010.

Past Apple posts on this blog

Design of an Apple Badge
iPhone: Apple's Most Profitable Product Ever?
Steve Jobs' iPhone: What's the Big Deal?
Steve Jobs, an artist of the highest order
Lessons from Steve Jobs' life
On Jef Raskin
Unveiling of iPod Nano
The Great Apple Turnaround
User Experience as competitive advantage

On IPCC Inaccuracies and Inadequacies

Yes, IPCC is inaccurate but not just the way the media has been projecting it in relation to melting of Himalayan glaciers.

Joe Romm has a great post on his popular Climate Progress blog in which he counters recent criticism that IPCC overestimated the date of Himalayan melting. He accurately mirrors my feelings when he says:

It isn't news that the 2007 projections by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are not accurate. The real news is that the 99% of their "mistakes" are UNDERestimates of likely impacts.

Since the IPCC is said to be reviewing evidence regarding this issue, Joe suggests they review all scientific literature regarding sea level rise and ice melt. That would be a good idea but limiting it to only sea level rise and ice melting does not make much sense.

Those of us who have been tracking climate science closely know that if one considers all the evidence that has come to light over the last three years, much of the IPCC edifice would crumble. In fact latest scientific assessments of literature published over this period, such as, The Copenhagen Diagnosis (Nov 2009), Scientific Congress Climate Change (Mar 2009) and to some degree Climate Change Science Compendium (UNEP Sep 2009) have been critical of IPCC.

It's not just sea level rise and ice melt in the poles that have been underestimated in IPCC AR4 projections but its reports are found lacking in several other areas as well.

• Emission growth scenarios - underestimated
• Oceans' capacity as carbon sinks - overestimated 
• Methane forcing - underestimated
• Forcing of geological and geomorphological hazards - inadequate
• Tipping elements and general irreversibility of climate change - inadequate
• Emission reduction approach - inadequate

New research and evidence on each of these areas show IPCC projections and its approach to be either deeply conservative or largely inadequate. So yes, IPCC needs to re-analyse evidence regarding the extent of melting in Tibetean-Himalayan glaciers -- the mistake occurred as they included a paper that did not go through the peer-review process, something that is supposed to identify errors such as these.

However, this is more of an exception than the rule. Almost all of IPCC research is based on peer-reviewed research. And as Joe says, most of the time IPCC has made a mistake, it is an underestimate of impacts. The important point is that it is these mistakes, the underestimates, that are much more dangerous than any inaccuracy that turns out to be an overestimate because the former lull our policymakers into thinking they have more time when in fact the time to act is long gone.

Mindbender

TV Appearence - Climate Change: India Dithers

Earlier this month, I was fortunate to be invited to be part of a TV programme on climate change. The programme ran on 8th July during prime time on NewsX, a 24hr News channel by the INX group that owns 9X entertainment channel (this less well-known news channel is actually pretty decent).

Other panelists included: the ever astute Manish Tiwari, spokesperson of the ruling Congress party; Suresh Kumar, Prof. National Disaster Management Forum and Hannan Mollah, MP from opposition CPM party.

Manish and I had a bit of a sparring close to the end of the show, which is natural as he represented the leadership that us minions are trying so hard to influence on this issue. I can't possibly be as spontaneous and fluent as him but the feedback I received after the show was quite positive and indicated I did come out on top.

I long for the day when I get to interview a policy maker eye to eye and put him through a grilling session -- you can use rhetorics and other evasive tactics but you cannot escape an argument with sound logic and infallible reasoning.

Since YouTube has a 10-min limit, an edited version of the show (basically the part featuring me) is included below.



You can watch the complete 30-min show here on Revver.com.

Motorwind Power - now accepting investment

Motorwind Power (P) Ltd. is now ready to accept investment proposals for expansion in India. Motorwind Power is Indian subsidiary of Hong Kong based Motorwave Co. - inventor and manufacturer of revolutionary Motorwind turbine solution.

The Hong Kong company has now committed itself to the Indian market. Mr. Lucien Gambarota, CEO Motorwave Co. will visit New Delhi in the first week of August to meet investors. A brief investor profile of the technology can be downloaded here (PDF - 260 kb) that introduces the Motorwind solution and the context in which it will exist.

This is a unique opportunity for an investor in Clean Tech space. Please get in touch if this interests you.

A touching and inspiring story about the power of one.

Down to Earth magazine, Nov 15 issue.

“Sir, did you get a cut on my dam?”
Aparna Pallavi

Maharashtra’s agriculture department is wiser after a brush with Banabai Kumre

The agriculture department official told Banabai Kumre that nothing would come of her complaint of corruption, because he had already paid hush money to the district collector and the chief minister. So the septuagenarian did what she thought was best: she went to Mumbai and asked Maharashtra’s chief minister if he had received a cut on the check dam on her land.

Banabai hails from village Kharula in Maharashtra’s Yavatmal district. The district attracted media spotlight in recent years because of a large number of farmers’ suicides. Banabai’s family of six barely managed to make ends meet. Though her extended family of more than 20 owned a farm as big as 10 hectares, only parts of it were cultivable where they grew jowar, pulses and paddy.

But their routine was upset in early June this year when a check dam flooded after a spell of heavy rains. The rushing waters destroyed the seedlings on Banabai’s land.

The dam was not very old. It was constructed barely a year ago. Banabai decided to report the matter to the agriculture department’s office at Yavatmal tehsil. After all Rs 3 lakh was spent under the prime minister’s relief package for constructing the dam.

An inspection team of the department visited the site on June 16. It confirmed Banabai’s allegations that inferior quality material was used to construct the dam. Fearing consequences, V B Mitkari, a supervisor with the agriculture department, who was involved with the construction of the dam, went to Banabai’s house and unleashed a volley of threats. He accused her of breaking the dam and told her that he had “fixed” all higher ups.

Unfazed, Banabai filed a second complaint with the district collector, mentioning Mitkari’s threats and demanded that the official be suspended. She alleged that only Rs 1 lakh had been spent on the dam, instead of the officially sanctioned Rs 3 lakh. She also alleged that instead of black soil, murum (a local variety of thick gravel) was used to construct the dam.

But there was no action. So Banabai went back to the collector’s office on July 1, and asked him directly, “ Tumhi paise khalle ka (did you take a bribe)?” The collector, Sanjay Deshmukh, was initially speechless. But within moments his team was in a hustle. An inspection team was dispatched immediately to the check dam site.

The memory of that day is precious to Banabai. “The inspection team and I had to travel by the collector’s own lal divyachi gadi’ (official vehicle with a red lamp), because there was no other vehicle at the collectorate at that time,” she says with a smile.

The team’s findings confirmed Banabai’s allegations. By this time, Banabai had become a bit of a star in the local media: pictures of the elderly woman walking with the help of a stick were splashed in several local dailies. On July 3, a pressured collector issued an verbal order that the dam on Banabai’s land be reconstructed. On the same day, Yavatmal district’s panchayat Samiti also passed a resolution supporting Banabai’s demand that Mitkari be suspended.

But no action was actually taken. So on July 7, Banabai went to Mumbai and sought a meeting with Maharashtra Chief Minister Vilas Rao Deshmukh. She had to wait for two days. The wait was not in vain.

Describing the meeting, Banabai says, “I recounted what Mitkari had told me, and asked the chief minister if indeed any money had arrived at the mantralaya (the building that houses most departments of the Maharashtra government).” The chief minister gave her a patient hearing. Banabai says, “He told me, you have come from very far. Please sit down. He ordered someone to bring water for me. ”

During the 15- minute conversation that followed, Banabai gave the chief minister an account of the corruption in works performed under the farmers’ package. The chief minister assured Banabai that he would take personal interest in the case. On August 17, Mitkari was suspended.

Banabai’s case attracted a lot of attention from the media. Her neighbours, are, however, somewhat guarded in their reaction—evidently fearing reprisal by the agriculture department.

Banabai’s life has returned to its daily rhythm. As this correspondent took leave, she told her, “One is lucky to land a government job. But those who get it become arrogant. These people have robbed poor farmers. They should be punished.”

The best explanation I could find on what the Large Hadron Collider was designed for...

A recipe. Build two pipes, each about 6 centimetres wide and 27 kilometres long. Bend them both into a circle and cool to 1.9 kelvin, about 300 °C below room temperature. Fill with protons - about a hundred billion of them to start with - all travelling as close to the speed of light as possible. Add a magnetic field a hundred thousand times more powerful than the Earth's to steer the particles through the pipes. And make sure the protons in each pipe move in opposite directions.

Now here's the exciting bit. Align the two pipes so that the particles collide. About twenty protons should smash into each other, creating showers of other particles. Take a good look at each one. If you spot a particle you don't recognise, shout.

Finally, repeat forty million times. Each second.

- New Scientist 1994 article

Wired too has an insightful take on the Best and Worst Case Scenarios for the world's costliest scientific experiment. See also the funny FAQ in the sidebar.

UPDATE: Here's an even better explanation in a CERN rap video.

HT Changes Tack, Gets Bold On Global Warming

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!

A Hundred Months to Act? Not On Earth!

The original BBC story is available here. It's based on a report by a little known British think-tank called New Economics Foundation. My take is that it will be foolish to presume we have 100 months to act. IPCC itself has said, even if we start making serious reductions by 2015 (about 77 months away) we may still reach 2.4 deg C of temperature rise.

Nasa's top climate scientist James Hansen in his landmark testimony to the US congress last month (which was also not covered by HT) said: "the oft-stated goal to keep global warming less than 2C is a recipe for global disaster, not salvation." So you can imagine 2.4C would be a calamity.

We do not have time. This is why Gore's challenge is so significant. It calls for radical reductions right away. But it needs your support.

"I have seen first hand how important it is to have a base of support out in the country for the truly bold changes that have to be made now. That is why I'm devoting my life to bring about a sea change in public opinion that supports the truly massive changes."

- Al Gore at a blogger convention on July 19, 2008.

Hindustan Times' censorship of Al Gore's challenge continued into its fifth day today.

Notes

This entry was also made on, Whats With The Climate blog, emailed to IYCN & Green-India discussion lists and copied to the following:

Vir Sanghvi, Editorial Director Hindustan Times
HT correspondents: Kinjal Dagli, Shalini Singh and Chetan Chauhan
Barkha Dutt, Group Editor, English News, NDTV
Dr. Rajendra K Pachauri, Director-General TERI
Sunita Narain, Director, Centre for Science and Environment
Bittu Sehgal, Editor, Sanctuary Magazine
Malini Mehra, Founder & Chief Executive, Centre for Social Markets

Hindustan Times On Gore's Speech: "It Didn't Happen"

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.

"It was too late for Friday's paper"

Gore's speech began at 9.30 pm Indian time on Thursday and ended just before 10.00 pm. Okay that could have been a little close to their cut off time. But earlier in the day, around 5.30 pm Associated Press (AP) had released an interview with Gore previewing the speech. So there was plenty of time for the paper to run a story on Friday.

I was lucky enough to get hands on the AP story just as it was out and wrote about it around 6.00 pm. I found my hands on the actual transcript of the speech around 10, before Gore had finished delivering it in Washington. But by 9.00 pm itself, there were lots of media reports on Google News referencing the AP release. In fact, rival Times of India even published the AP story on Friday and mentioned it on the front page header too. So why did the Hindustan Times ignore it altogether?

Even if one accepts it was too late for Friday's paper, there can't be a reasonable explanation of its omission on Saturday as well, apart from it being intentional. TOI ran an editorial on it on Saturday. A full day after the speech was out when papers around the world were writing about it (1000+ mentions on Google News by now), India's leading newspaper pretends it didn't happen.

"They didn't have enough space"

A story as important as this deserves to create its own space pushing aside other less important ones. But perhaps there were other reports even more important that needed to be mentioned. Alright, lets see what else HT ran in the World section that day.

World section, page 19 | Hindustan Times, New Delhi, Saturday, July 19, 2008

Main page

Happy Birthday, Mandela
India, China drive up Christie's sales
Osama's driver to be tried for war crimes
European terrorists trying to enter US
Ahead of Games, sex shops shut down
Pak terror groups getting bolder: US
Progress on Saarc varsity to be reviewed
Young's self-published 'The Shack' a hit

Sidebar

Nature's fury: typhoon kills 7 in Taiwan
Obama raises $52m in a month for campaign
Iran expects positive US presence at N-talks
Sex trade up in Oz during Pope's visit
Female suicide bomber held in Afganistan
Libyan sent to jail for lying about Afgan visit

Header

Emmy nominations
Python spins out of washing machine

World section, page 20

Desperate Housewives to end in three years
Want free gas? Name baby after radio station

I can't see any of these stories being more important than Gore's challenge which, if pursued, could fix the US economy, end their national security threat and most importantly lead the world into addressing the climate crisis

"It wasn't relevant for Indian readers"

Looking at above stories, it's clear that wasn't the case. Climate change is a problem that will hit India severely. U.S and India share similar challenges in terms of moving from fossil fuels to clean energy sources.

The same is true for China and other Asian countries as well. So I looked up Chinese and Pakistani news publications to see whether they covered this issue. Turns out they did.

South China Morning Post, China:
Gore's is a cry the whole world should heed

Xinhua News Agency, China:
Gore proposes carbon-free electricity production by 2018

UDN, Taiwan (translation):
高爾號召：10年內棄用石油 (source)

The News, Pakistan:
Al-Gore urges US to generate power with clean fuel

Clearly, there are some vested interests at work to ensure that public opinion in India remains uninformed or misinformed about climate change. The effort seems to be working. For example, most people in urban India, even those who consider themselves "environment friendly" do not grasp climate change mitigation potential of their actions or how far their actions go to address climate change, in other words.

Today's (Sunday's) paper, for example, contains a full-page feature titled "Green brigade: Even five-year-olds are doing their bit to counter the dangers of global warming." The stories in this feature are commendable and probably inspiring to some but are largely uninformed about what causes global warming and what kind of actions can address this issue.

Only one of the several examples mentioned in the three stories have something directly to do with lowering energy consumption. Others are about minimising waste generation, saving water, tree plantation, ozone depletion, air pollution, unemployment, recycling and cultural education.

All of these are most welcome and do lower CO2 emissions but only indirectly. They certainly cannot be clubbed together under the title of "examples that counter the dangers of global warming." Even if every kid in India did all of that (and they should!), we'd still be nowhere close to addressing global warming as long as we kept burning fossil fuels. Apparently, even seasoned reporters can't differentiate between good environmental practices and those that mitigate climate change.

I'd rather see real climate change news in the papers. Al Gore's energy challenge is likely to be a historic event in the fight against this issue as I wrote previously. I'd like some answers as to why Hindustan Times kept its readers in dark about it.

Notes

This entry was also made on Whats With The Climate blog, emailed to IYCN & Green-India discussion lists and copied to the following:

Vir Sanghvi, Editorial Director Hindustan Times
HT correspondents: Kinjal Dagli, Shalini Singh and Chetan Chauhan
Barkha Dutt, Group Editor, English News, NDTV
Dr. Rajendra K Pachauri, Director-General TERI
Sunita Narain, Director, Centre for Science and Environment
Bittu Sehgal, Editor, Sanctuary Magazine
Malini Mehra, Founder & Chief Executive, Centre for Social Markets