"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence"

There is apparently a great deal of interest among people to believe in stuff which are no where close to the truth and reality. I hope you guess it right, 21st December and the End of the world hoax. Well we all have to die one day or the other but I realized people have been believing and continue to believe lies that have no credibility from centuries on. (Link -  list of dates predicted for the apocalyptic events) 

Dates for the end of the world are proposed, that keep postponing and preponing when realizing that the world did not end on the day that was prophesied. I found a interesting article posted on the NASA website that just refutes the claims of the end of the world that is supposed to happen TODAY.

And actually "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." (quote by Carl Sagan) which is just lacking in the so called claims of the dooms day people. 

Are we banking on more dams to reap more disasters?

An article in the International weekly Journal of Science - Nature on Flood of protest hits Indian dams, Himalayan plans pose ecological threat, researchers warn raises concerns and highlights the agitations by native people on huge number of dams to be built on the youthful rivers of Himalayas. More than all the concerns raised, I am surprised that such places are focal areas of huge earthquakes and are totally ignored when building such reservoirs. Haven't we had enough deaths and have enough problems with displacement of people, loss of livelihood, loss of biodiversity, slicing of our beautiful mountains, loss of culture and language ...and the list goes no. Are we banking on more Dams to have a so called 'Economic growth' and want to reap disasters with more interest??

Courtesy: Nature, International weekly journal of Science.

Recent conclave concluded at Mahabaleshwar for Saving the Western Ghats highlighted the very dangers of big reservoirs that has posed on the rich biodiversity nestled in the Western wall of India, session taken by South Asia network on dams, rivers and people. I hope my readers would take note of the articles published by SANDRP, which are really insightful into the problems of our unplanned development. Also worth mentioning was the accelerated transformation of the landscape in the Western Ghats in the past couple of decades and its future changes expected due to rising population was really scary given by a research institute on Population studies based in Bangaluru (Just don't remember their name right now).

I hope that our Earth is protected from the greed of having more than what we require, but I don't think that the motion we have set in can be undone anymore, if at all there is an inner revolution in every individual to change this present scenario and restrict our wants. There would be more conflicts and tensions over sharing this limited natural resources in the years to come and it is already happening (eg. Water) with ever increasing population. And I don't think that we can really change the wishes, thoughts and actions of people, only if it starts from 'Me'.