One of the most least discussed or shown story about global environmental change is the wholesale drying up of the Tibetan Plateau due to rapdily melting glaciers and rapidly reducing monsoonal precipiation as snow. Indeed, this is a good example for why hundreds of millions of climate change refugees may be seeking relocation over the next few decades. If fresh water no longer exists in your macro-area, well then, you really can't live there anymore.
Currently, the Tibetan Plateau supplies fresh water to about 1/3 of all humanity, largerly through a watershed defined by a few noteworthy rivers:
Water stresses have been very large in this reason for sometime (at least the last 15 years) and therefore this is not a new problem, it is simply an ignored problem. A snapshot in time shows this stress (as of 2013) and it has only gotten worse since then.
The country of India is in particuarly dire straits, and, unlike China, does not have the capital to deal with this.
But of course we can just tow icebergs, right - that will work right. Disney's first law says that will work. What does this guy know?
Rapid Glacier melt is shown below. The average rate of decrease is 7% a year which means the total size of the glacier 1/2's in just 10 years - by 20 years it is down to 1/4 of its original size, now heavily laden with sediment and not a very practical source of fresh water any more.
Both in the Himalays and the Andes there are increasing risks of glacial outburst floods. These can happen suddenly and wipe out entire indigeneous villages. This is not a myth, there have been
several examples over the past 30 years:
And precisely because they do have the capital - China is planning to rob everyone else of the dwindling fresh water coming from the Tibetan Plateau. Remember, Tibet is an automonous region - it is not a country yet no country owns the Tibetan Plateau.
