At a recent meet of climate change communicators in Kathmandu, a documentary film called ‘A Degree of Concern’ by Syed Fayaz got the attendees talking animatedly. The film made in the last decade, projected a scenario in a distant future when one degree rise in temperature would play havoc with the glaciers, make agriculture unsustainable and, in short, impact every aspect of our life. It ended with an ominous and alarming warning: “Just one degree”. Though cinema-wise sound, the foremost criticism for the film was its poor scientific assumption — it relied on a baseline data of just three years, in which the temperatures in the freeze zones of upper Himalayas was found to be fluctuating increasing by two degrees every year. That was the basic flaw — a poor baseline.  Read more