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With the recent confirmation by the U.S. government that the fracking process causes earthquakes, the list of fracking's deadly byproducts is growing longer and more worrisome. And while the process produces jobs and natural gas, the host of environmental, health and safety hazards continues to make fracking a hot-button issue that evenly divides Americans.To help keep track of all the bad stuff, here's a roundup of the various nasty things that could happen when you drill a hole in the surface of the earth, inject toxic chemicals into the hole at a high pressure and then inject the wastewater deep underground.But first, let's take a look at some of the numbers:40,000: gallons of chemicals used for each fracturing site8 million: number of gallons of water used per fracking600: number of chemicals used in the fracking fluid, including known carcinogens and toxins such as lead, benzene, uranium, radium, methanol, mercury, hydrochloric acid, ethylene glycol and formaldehyde10,000: number of feet into the ground that the fracking fluid is injected through a drilled pipeline1.1 million: number of active gas wells in the United States72 trillion: gallons of water needed to run current gas wells360 billion: gallons of chemicals needed to run current gas wells300,000: number of barrel of natural gas produced a day from frackingAnd here are eight of the worst side effects of fracking you don't hear about from those slick TV commercials paid for by the industry.1. Burning the furniture to heat the house.During the fracking process, methane gas and toxic chemicals leach out from the well and contaminate nearby groundwater. The contaminated water is used for drinking water in local communities. There have been over 1,000 documented cases of water contamination near fracking areas as well as cases of sensory, respiratory and neurological damage due to ingested contaminated water.In 2011, the New York Times reported that it obtained thousands of internal documents from the EPA, state regulators and fracking companies, which reveal that "the wastewater, which is sometimes hauled to sewage plants not designed to treat it and then discharged into rivers that supply drinking water, contains radioactivity at levels higher than previously known, and far higher than the level that federal regulators say is safe for these treatment plants to handle."A single well can produce more than a million gallons of wastewater, which contains radioactive elements like radium and carcinogenic hydrocarbons like benzene. In addition, methane concentrations are 17 times higher in drinking-water wells near fracking sites than in normal wells. Only 30-50 percent of the fracturing fluid is recovered; the rest is left in the ground and is not biodegradable.“We’re burning the furniture to heat the house,” said John H. Quigley, former secretary of Pennsylvania’s Department of Conservation and Natural Resources. “In shifting away from coal and toward natural gas, we’re trying for cleaner air, but we’re producing massive amounts of toxic wastewater with salts and naturally occurring radioactive materials, and it’s not clear we have a plan for properly handling this waste."2. Squeezed out.More than 90 percent of the water used in fracking well never returns to the surface. Since that water is permanently removed from the natural water cycle, this is bad news for drought-afflicted or water-stressed states, such as Arkansas, California, Kansas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Utah, Texas and Wyoming."We don't want to look up 20 years from now and say, Oops, we used up all our water," said Jason Banes of the Boulder, Colorado-based Western Resource Advocates.The redirection of water supplies to the fracking industry not only causes water price spikes, but also reduces water availability for crop irrigation.There is a new player for water, which is oil and gas," said Kent Peppler, president of the Rocky Mountain Farmers Union. "And certainly they are in a position to pay a whole lot more than we are."3. Bad for babies.The waste fluid left over from the fracking process is left in open-air pits to evaporate, which releases dangerous volatile organic compounds (VOCs) into the atmosphere, creating contaminated air, acid rain and ground-level ozone.Exposure to diesel particulate matter, hydrogen sulfide and volatile hydrocarbons can lead to a host of health problems, including asthma, headaches, high blood pressure, anemia, heart attacks and cancer.It can also have a damaging effect on immune and reproductive systems, as well as fetal and child development. A 2014 study conducted by the Colorado Department of Environmental and Occupational Health found that mothers who live near fracking sites are 30 percent more likely to have babies with congenital heart defects.Research from Cornell University indicates an increased prevalence of low birth weight and reduced APGAR scores in infants born to mothers living near fracking sites in Pennsylvania. And in Wyoming's Sublette County, the fracking boom has been linked to dangerous spikes in ozone concentrations. A study led by the state's Department of Health found that these ozone spikes are associated with increased outpatient clinic visits for respiratory problems.4. Killer gas.A recent study by researchers at Johns Hopkins University found that homes located in suburban and rural areas near fracking sites have an overall radon concentration 39 percent higher than those located in non-fracking urban areas. The study included almost 2 million radon readings taken between 1987 and 2013 done in over 860,000 buildings from every county, mostly homes.A naturally occurring radioactive gas formed by the decay of uranium in rock, soil and water, radon—odorless, tasteless and invisible—moves through the ground and into the air, while some remains dissolved in groundwater where it can appear in water wells. It is the second leading cause of lung cancer worldwide, after smoking. The EPA estimates approximately 21,000 lung cancer deaths in the U.S. are radon-related."Between 2005-2013, 7,469 unconventional wells were drilled in Pennsylvania. Basement radon concentrations fluctuated between 1987-2003, but began an upward trend from 2004-2012 in all county categories," the researchers wrote.That trending period just happens to start when Pennsylvania's fracking boom began: Between Jan. 1, 2005, and March 2, 2012, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection issued 10,232 drilling permits; only 36 requests were denied.5. Shifting sands.In addition to all the water and toxic chemicals, fracking requires the use of fine sand, or frac sand, which has driven a silica sand mining boom in Minnesota and Wisconsin, which together have 164 active frac sand facilities with 20 more proposed. Both states are where most of the stuff is produced and where regulations are lax for air and water pollution monitoring. Northeastern Iowa has also become a primary source."Silica can impede breathing and cause respiratory irritation, cough, airway obstruction and poor lung function," according to Environmental Working Group. "Chronic or long-term exposure can lead to lung inflammation, bronchitis and emphysema and produce a severe lung disease known as silicosis, a form of pulmonary fibrosis. Silica-related lung disease is incurable and can be fatal, killing hundreds of workers in the U.S. each year.""I could feel dust clinging to my face and gritty particles on my teeth,” said Victoria Trinko, a resident of Bloomer, Wisconsin. Within nine months of the construction of frac sand mine, about a half-mile from her home, she developed a sore throat and raspy voice and was eventually diagnosed with environment-caused asthma. She hasn't opened her windows since 2012.Across the 33-county frac sand mining area that spans Minnesota, Wisconsin and Iowa, nearly 60,000 people live less than half a mile from existing or proposed mines. And new danger zones will likely pop up around the nation: Due to the fracking boom, environmentalists and public health advocates warn that frac sand mines could spread to several states with untapped silica deposits, including Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, New York, North Carolina, South Carolina, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Vermont and Virginia.Bryan Shinn, the chief executive of sand mining company U.S. Silica Holdings said in September that due to the fracking boom, they "see a clear pathway to the volume of sand demand that's out there doubling or tripling in the next four to five years."6. Shake, rattle and roll.On April 20, the U.S. Geological Survey released a long-awaited report that confirmed what many scientists have long speculated: the fracking process causes earthquakes. Specifically, over the last seven years, geologically stable regions of the U.S., including parts of Alabama, Arkansas, Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico, Ohio, Oklahoma and Texas, have experienced movements in faults that have not moved in millions of years. Plus, it's difficult or impossible to predict where future fracking-caused earthquakes will occur."They're ancient faults," said USGS geophysicist William Ellsworth. "We don’t always know where they are."Ellsworth led the USGS team that analyzed changes in earthquake occurrence rates in the central and eastern United States since 1970. They found that between 1973–2008, there was an average of 21 earthquakes of at least magnitude three. From 2009-2013, the region experienced 99 M3+ earthquakes per year. And the rate is still rising. In Oklahoma, there were 585 earthquakes in 2014—more than in the last 35 years combined."The increase in seismicity has been found to coincide with the injection of wastewater in deep disposal wells in several locations, including Colorado, Texas, Arkansas, Oklahoma and Ohio," the report states. "Much of this wastewater is a byproduct of oil and gas production and is routinely disposed of by injection into wells specifically designed and approved for this purpose."For many years, Oklahoma's government has been reluctant to concede the connection between fracking and earthquakes. In October of last year, during a gubernatorial election debate with state Rep. Joe Dorman, a Democrat, Governor Mary Fallin, a Republican, declined to say whether or not she believed earthquakes were caused by fracking. Fallin was re-elected.But the government has finally come around. The day after the USGS report was released, on April 21, the Oklahoma Geological Survey, a state agency, released a statement saying that is it "very likely that the majority of recent earthquakes, particularly those is central and north-central Oklahoma, are triggered by the injection of produced water in disposal wells."The same day, the state's energy and environment department launched a website that explains the finding along with an earthquake map and what the government is doing about it all. According to the site, "Oklahoma state agencies are not waiting to take action."Now there is a split between the state's governmental branches: Two days after the executive branch admitted that fracking causes earthquakes, the state's lawmakers, evidently unmoved by the trembling ground, passed two bills, backed by the oil and gas industry, that limit the ability of local communities to decide if they want fracking in their backyards.7. The heat is on.Natural gas is mostly methane, a highly potent greenhouse gas that traps 86 times as much heat as carbon dioxide. And because methane leaks during the fracking process, fracking may be worse than burning coal, mooting the claim that natural gas burns more cleanly than coal."When you frack, some of that gas leaks out into the atmosphere," writes 350.org: A global campaign to confront the climate crisis co-founder Bill McKibben. "If enough of it leaks out before you can get it to a power plant and burn it, then it's no better, in climate terms, than burning coal. If enough of it leaks, America's substitution of gas for coal is in fact not slowing global warming."A recent international satellite study on North American fracking production led by the Institute of Environmental Physics at the University of Bremen in Germany found that "fugitive methane emissions" caused by the fracking process "may counter the benefit over coal with respect to climate change" and that "net climate benefit…is unlikely.""Even small leaks in the natural gas production and delivery system can have a large climate impact—enough to gut the entire benefit of switching from coal-fired power to gas," writes Joe Romm, the founding editor of the blog Climate Progress. "The climate will likely be ruined already well past most of our lifespans by the time natural gas has a net climate benefit."8. Quid pro quo?Finally, one of the more insidious side effects of fracking is less about the amount of chemicals flowing into the ground and more about the amount of money flowing into politicians' campaign coffers from the fracking industry.According to a 2013 report by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), contributions from fracking trade groups and companies operating fracking wells to congressional candidates representing states and districts where fracking occurs rose by more than 230 percent between the 2004 and 2012 election cycles, from $2.1 million to $6.9 million.That is nearly twice as much as the increase in contributions from the fracking industry to candidates from non-fracking districts during the same period, outpacing contributions from the entire oil and gas industry to all congressional candidates. Republican congressional candidates have received nearly 80 percent of fracking industry contributions."The fracking boom isn’t just good for the industry, but also for congressional candidates in fracking districts," said CREW executive director Melanie Sloan.The candidate who has received the most in contributions from the fracking industry is Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX). Barton received more than $500,000 between the 2004 and 2012 election cycles—over $100,000 more than any other candidate in the nation. It should come as no surprise that Barton sponsored the Energy Policy Act of 2005, which exempted fracking from federal oversight under the Safe Drinking Water Act.On April 21, Colorado and Wyoming filed a lawsuit challenging the new federal fracking regulations issued last month by the Bureau of Land Management for onshore drilling on tribal and public lands, claiming that the rule, which regulates underground injections in the fracking process, "exceeds the agency's statutory jurisdiction.""The debate over hydraulic fracturing is complicated enough without the federal government encroaching on states’ rights," said Colorado Attorney General Cynthia H. Coffman, in a statement. "This lawsuit will demonstrate that BLM exceeds its powers when it invades the states’ regulatory authority in this area."Coffman, a Republican, is married to Colorado Rep. Mike Coffman (CO-8), also a Republican. Coffman and two other GOP representatives from the state, Scott Tipton (CO-3) and Doug Lamborn (CO-5), have sponsored a trio of bills—H.R. 4321, 4382 and 4383 (called the “3 Stooges” bills by environmentalists)—that would fast-track leasing and permitting for drilling and fracking on public lands. These three congressmen, each of whom have received more than $100,000 in contributions from the oil and gas industry, sit on the Natural Resources Committee and naturally oppose federal regulations on fracking.Short-Term ThinkingFracking proponents point to the fact that it produces natural gas and jobs; indeed takes credit for boosting the economy during the recession. But at what cost to public health and the environment? And can the true cost be known when there is a lack of transparency in the fracking industry?With little federal oversight, states have created a non-uniform patchwork of regulation: Illinois requires fracking companies to disclose information about the chemicals they use before they drill and monitor groundwater through the process, while Virginia doesn't require any disclosure."So far, the industry has successfully fended off almost all federal regulation of fracking, in part through key exemptions from federal laws such as the Safe Drinking Water Act, which otherwise would allow the EPA to directly regulate fracking and other aspects of oil and gas production," says CREW.The FRAC Act (Fracturing Responsibility and Awareness of Chemicals Act) would require the energy industry to disclose all chemicals used in fracturing fluid and also repeal fracking's exemption from the Safe Drinking Water Act.Of course, everyone wants reliable domestically produced energy that creates jobs and energy independence. But nothing comes for free. And in the case of fracking, still with so many unknowns, the price in the long run may be too great.That's part of the message that Reps. Mark Pocan (D-WI) and Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) hope the American public gets. On April 22, Earth Day, the two lawmakers introduced the Protect Our Public Lands Act, H.R. 1902. The strongest anti-fracking bill ever introduced into Congress, it seeks to ban fracking on public lands. Today, 90 percent of federally managed lands are open for potential oil and gas leasing; the remaining 10 percent are reserved for conservation, recreation, wildlife and cultural heritage."Our national parks, forests and public lands are some of our most treasured places and need to be protected for future generations,” said Pocan. "It is clear fracking has a detrimental impact on the environment and there are serious safety concerns associated with these type of wells. Until we fully understand the effects, the only way to avoid these risks is to halt fracking entirely. We should not allow short-term economic gain to harm our public lands, damage our communities or endanger workers."Sounds logical enough. But with oil and gas money steering the Republican-controlled Congress, the bill is dead in the radioactive wastewater.Source : GoogleThank you

YES. What follows are leading climate scientists who are skeptical of so called climate change and why the real deniers are those alarmists who deny the long view of living in the middle of an ice age and the reality of natural variability from solar cycles. Many forces including the earth’s orbital tilt not human emissions of trace amounts of CO2, the air we all exhale with every breath to stay alive, have a major effect on the climate.A major point documented by the Working Group 1 of the IPCC against alarmist theories who deny natural variability in the recent warming and blame humans for the change is the inability to separate the natural from the human impacts.Think about this fact. In 1995 2000+ climate scientists from around the world working on the UN IPCC project concluded as follows:In the 1995 2nd Assessment Report of the UN IPCC the scientists included these three statements in the draft:1. “None of the studies cited above has shown clear evidence that we can attribute the observed (climate) changes to the specific cause of increases in greenhouse gases.”2. “No study to date has positively attributed all or part (of observed climate change) to anthropogenic (i.e. man-made) causes.”3. “Any claims of positive detection of significant climate change are likely to remain controversial until uncertainties in the natural variability of the climate system are reduced.”[NATURAL VARIABILITY OVERPOWERS ANY HUMAN IMPACT]Instead of accepting the uncertainty of our complex climate and the difficulty of finding evidence that parses or separates human effects from the dominant natural effects the draft summary was ignored along with the scientists plea for more research with a detailed program outlined. No, the UN General Assembly leaders took over the science Report without credibility and published this dishonest conclusion HIDING THE WORKING GROUP DISSENT.“The balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate.”This sordid story of mendacity is told objectively and documented by Bernie Lewin in this book -The author allows these select passages from his book for discussion. They show how the IPCC was threatened with extinction for failing to find human climate change and then the political arm of the UN interfered and fudged the reports using the Michael Mann fudged hockey stick graphs that erased conventional history of the Medieval Warming and the Little Ice Age. -Following the welcoming addresses by the Italian President and Environment Minister, there first came Patrick Obasi, Secretary General of the WMO. At the conclusion of a speech mostly making recommendations for the future direction of the IPCC, he noted that the most important result in the current assessment is the evidence for a ‘discernible human influence on global climate’.682 Next came the new head of UNEP, Elizabeth Dowdeswell, who opened with the now familiar narrative of triumph: A decade ago, the scientific community alerted the world to the likelihood that we humans are causing the global climate to change. Five years ago, you said you were very confident that this is indeed the case, but that it would be ten years before we would experience any consequences. Now, just five years later, you are reporting that effects of global warming are upon us. As you put it in your report, ‘The balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate’.683 Later in her speech, this key component of the report’s message is summarised, without qualification, as ‘human activities are affecting the global climate’ and so… For the first time, we have evidence that a signal of global warming is beginning to emerge from the ‘noise’ of natural variability. In other words, you [the IPCC] have given the world a reality check. You have pinched us and we have realised we are not dreaming. Climate change is with us. The question is: what do we do with this knowledge?684Lewin, Bernie. Searching for the Catastrophe Signal: The Origins of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (pp. 286-287). Global Warming Policy Foundation. Kindle Edition.A fudged hockey stick by Mann saved the IPCC from being damned out of existenceUnder Houghton and Watson the IPCC third assessment would champion the work of another young scientist who in 1998 produced a temperature trend graph that seemed to have solved Barnett’s problem of a natural variability ‘yardstick’. Using proxy data stretching back to the end of the Medieval Warm Period and instrumental data for the last 100 years, Michael Mann’s results showed such a rapid general warming trend over the last 100 years that it towered over previous fluctuations, thus leaving no room for doubt that something extraordinary is now underway.735Mann soon extended his study back across an entire millennium and this so-called ‘Hockey Stick’ graph is what featured in the IPCC third assessment report. When the report was released in 2001, the graph was the most spectacular vehicle for its promotion; it was also later widely used by governments promoting emissions-reduction policies.These campaigns were not unduly affected by the concerns that were soon raised about the methodology of the graph’s construction, nor by the ensuing Hockey Stick controversy, which would grow to be much larger and endure much longer than the Chapter 8 controversy.736 Instead, the visual impact of the Hockey Stick continued to overwhelm any doubt that there was already a discernible human influence on the global climate.If we consider the other lead authors of Chapter 8, we find that they would suffer little from the controversy, but they won none of the accolades afforded Santer, which is hardly surprising given that they were not always entirely in accord with the IPCC line. Tom Wigley’s expressed scepticism of the science behind climate action extended beyond the determination of natural variability. We will remember that just after the lead author meeting in Asheville he had published a commentary on the Met Office’s neat tracking of the recent global temperature trend, questioning the simulation of the sulphate effect and the apparent success of the modelling prediction. But even before Asheville he also questioned the scientific-economic rationale behind the rush towards emissions reduction. Collaborating with energy economists on a study partly funded by the energy industry, he concluded that it is not advisable to start curbing emissions for another 30 years.* Still, he remained fiercely loyal to Santer during the Chapter 8 controversy and to all the scientists working under the funding generated by the scare. His continuing `loyal opposition’ is particularly evident in emails leaked in 2009, which show that during the Hockey Stick controversy he was at the same time working hard behind the scenes to fend off skeptics while privately agreeing with much of the criticism of Mann’s work.* 738Lewin, Bernie. Searching for the Catastrophe Signal: The Origins of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (pp. 308-309). Global Warming Policy Foundation. Kindle Edition.Sanders is a left wing politician and this group sadly have a reputation of not telling the truth about the science.– Christine Stewart,former Canadian Minister of the Environment“No matter if the science of global warming is all phony…climate change provides the greatest opportunity tobring about justice and equality in the world.”– Christine Stewart,>**CAMILLE PAGLIA** (Camille Paglia | Salon.com)>OCTOBER 10, 2007 11:19AM (UTC)>**I too grew up in upstate New York. I am an environmental groundwater geologist (who almost majored in fine arts). Your take on the ****Al Gore** (http://dir.salon.com/topics/al_gore/)**/global warming pseudo-catastrophe was right on target. Anyone can read up on Holocene geology and see that climate changes are caused by polar wandering and magnetic reversals. It is entertaining, yet sad to read bloviage from ****Leonardo DiCaprio** (http://dir.salon.com/topics/leonardo_dicaprio/)**, who is so self-centered that he thinks the earth's history and climate is a function of his short personal stay on this planet. Still he, Al Gore, Prince Charles and so on, ad nauseam, continue with their jet-set lifestyles. What hypocrisy!**>Thank you for your input on the mass hysteria over global warming. The simplest facts about geology seem to be missing from the mental equipment of many highly educated people these days. There is far too much credulity placed in fancy-pants, speculative computer modeling about future climate change. Furthermore, hand-wringing media reports about hotter temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere are rarely balanced by acknowledgment of the recent cold waves in South Africa and Australia, the most severe in 30 years.>Where are the intellectuals in this massive attack of groupthink? Inert, passive and cowardly, the lot of them. True intellectuals would be alarmed and repelled by the heavy fog of dogma that now hangs over the debate about climate change. More skeptical voices need to be heard. Why are liberals abandoning this issue to the right wing, which is successfully using it to contrast conservative rationality with liberal emotionalism? The environmental movement, whose roots are in nature-worshipping Romanticism, is vitally important to humanity, but it can only be undermined by rampant propaganda and half-truths.>The paranoid withdrawal fantasy (The paranoid withdrawal fantasy)>**Camille Paglia** is a second-wave feminist and an American (United States - RationalWiki) academic specializing in literature (Literature - RationalWiki) and culture, particularly topics around gender (Gender - RationalWiki), sex (Sex - RationalWiki), and sexuality (Sexuality - RationalWiki). She has taught at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia since 1984, but is better known for her books and journalism. In 2005 she was voted #20 on a list of top public intellectuals by *Prospect* and *Foreign Policy* magazines.>**Nobel Laureate in Physics Dr. Ivar Giaever; "Global Warming is Pseudoscience"**https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdTlXuTwvEQ&t=65s>Published on 3 May 2018>Nobel Laureate Dr. Kary Mullis is correct in his assessment of the current state of climate science, describing it as a "Joke".>As he correctly points out, there is no scientific evidence whatever that our CO2 is, or can ever "drive" climate change.>There is also no published empirical scientific evidence that any CO2, whether natural or man-made, causes warming in the troposphere.>Mullis earned a Bachelor of Science (BS) degree in chemistry from the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta in 1966, he then received a PhD in biochemistry from the University of California, Berkeley in 1973.>His Nobel Prize was awarded in 1993.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1FnWFlDvxEWho is the most famous person who denies natural variation and mother nature as governing climate change?Home (Newsmax.com - Breaking news from around the globe) | Newsfront (Newsmax.com - Breaking news from around the globe: U.S. news, politics, world, health, finance, video, science, technology, live news stream)**Monday December 03, 2018****Physicist Dyson: Obama 'Chose the Wrong Side' on Climate Change**>Freeman Dyson (Nadine Rupp/Getty Images)By Greg Richter | Wednesday, 14 October 2015 09:32 PM>Noted theoretical physicist Freeman Dyson says he votes for Democrats, but is disappointed with the position President Barack Obama has taken on climate change.>Dyson worked on climate change before his retirement as professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton in 1994, and said in an interview with the **U.K. Register** (Top boffin Freeman Dyson on climate change, interstellar travel, fusion, and more) that scientists are ignoring their own data that show climate change isn't happening as quickly as their models are predicting.>"It's very sad that in this country, political opinion parted [people's views on climate change]," Dyson said. "I'm 100 percent Democrat myself, and I like Obama. But he took the wrong side on this issue, and the Republicans took the right side.">Climate change, he said, "is not a scientific mystery but a human mystery. How does it happen that a whole generation of scientific experts is blind to obvious facts?">In the past 10 years the discrepancies between what is observed and what is predicted have become much stronger," Dyson said. "It's clear now the models are wrong, but it wasn't so clear 10 years ago. I can't say if they'll always be wrong, but the observations are improving and so the models are becoming more verifiable.">Carbon dioxide isn't as bad for the environment as claimed, he said, and actually does more good than harm.>Among Dyson's suggestions for combating climate change are building up topsoil and inducing snowfall to prevent the oceans from rising.>Dyson is best known for his work in quantum electrodynamics and nuclear engineering.Read Newsmax: Physicist Dyson: Obama 'Chose the Wrong Side' on Climate Change | Newsmax.com - Breaking news from around the globe (Physicist Dyson: Obama 'Chose the Wrong Side' on Climate Change)>**The Top Five Skeptical Climate-Change Scientists****[2]** (The Top 15 Climate-Change Scientists: Consensus & Skeptics)>**1. Lennart O. Bengtsson**>Bengtsson was born in Trollhättan, Sweden, in 1935. He holds a PhD (1964) in meteorology from the University of Stockholm. His long and productive career included positions as Head of Research and later Director at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts in Reading in the UK (1976 — 1990), and as Director of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg (1991 — 2000). Bengtsson is currently Senior Research Fellow with the Environmental Systems Science Centre at the University of Reading, as well as Director Emeritus of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology.Bengtsson’s scientific work has been wide-ranging, including everything from climate modelling and numerical weather prediction to climate data and data assimilation studies. Most recently, he has been involved in studies and modeling of the water cycle and extreme events. From his twin home bases in the UK and Germany, he has cooperated closely over the years with scientists in the US, Sweden, Norway, and other European countries.Bengtsson is best known to the general public due to a dispute which arose in 2014 over a paper he and his colleagues had submitted to *Environmental Research Letters*, but which was rejected for publication for what Bengtsson believed to be “activist” reasons. The paper disputed the uncertainties surrounding climate sensitivity to increased greenhouse gas concentrations contained in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fourth and Fifth Assessment Reports. Bengtsson and his co-authors maintained that the uncertainties are greater than the IPCC Assessment Reports claim. The affair was complicated by the fact that Bengtsson had recently agreed to serve on the board of the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), a climate skeptic organization. When Bengtsson voiced his displeasure over the rejection of his paper, and mainstream scientists noticed his new affiliation with the GWPF, intense pressure was brought to bear, both in public and behind the scenes, to force Bengtsson to recant his criticism of the journal in question and to resign from the GWPF. He finally did both of these things, but not without noting bitterly in his letter of resignation:>I have been put under such an enormous group pressure in recent days from all over the world that has become virtually unbearable to me. If this is going to continue I will be unable to conduct my normal work and will even start to worry about my health and safety. I see therefore no other way out therefore than resigning from GWPF. I had not expecting [sic] such an enormous world-wide pressure put at me from a community that I have been close to all my active life. Colleagues are withdrawing their support, other colleagues are withdrawing from joint authorship etc.>I see no limit and end to what will happen. It is a situation that reminds me about the time of McCarthy. I would never have expecting [sic] anything similar in such an original peaceful community as meteorology. Apparently it has been transformed in recent years.>[14] (The Top 15 Climate-Change Scientists: Consensus & Skeptics)Bengtsson is the author or co-author of over 180 peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters, as well as co-editor of several books (see below). In addition to numerous grants, commission and board memberships, honorary degrees, and other forms of professional recognition, he has received the Milutin Milanković Medal (1996) bestowed by the European Geophysical Society, the Descartes Prize (2005) bestowed by the European Union, the International Meteorological Organization Prize (2006), and the Rossby Prize (2007) bestowed by the Swedish Geophysical Society. Bengtsson is an Honorary Member of the American Meteorological Society (AMS), a Member of the New York Academy of Sciences and the Gesellschaft Deutscher Naturforscher und Ärzte, an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Meteorological Society (UK), and a Fellow of the Swedish Academy of Science, the Finnish Academy of Science, and the European Academy.**Professional Website** (Bengtsson Lennart)**Selected Books*** *Geosphere-Biosphere Interactions and Climate* (Cambridge University Press, 2001)* *The Earth’s Cryosphere and Sea Level Change* (Springer, 2012)* *Observing and Modeling Earth’s Energy Flows* (Springer, 2012)* *Towards Understanding the Climate of Venus: Applications of Terrestrial Models to Our Sister Planet* (Springer, 2013)>**2. John R. Christy**>Christy was born in Fresno, California, in 1951. He holds a PhD (1987) in atmospheric science from the University of Illinois. He is currently Distinguished Professor of Atmospheric Science and Director of the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama in Huntsville.Christy is best known for work he did with Roy W. Spencer beginning in 1979 on establishing reliable global temperature data sets derived from microwave radiation probes collected by satellites. Theirs was the first successful attempt to use such satellite data collection for the purpose of establishing long-term temperature records. Although the data they collected were initially controversial, and some corrections to the interpretation of the raw data had to be made, the work — which is coming up on its fortieth anniversary — remains uniquely valuable for its longevity, and is still ongoing. Christy has long been heavily involved in the climate change/global warming discussion, having been a Contributor or Lead Author to five Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports relating to satellite temperature records. He was a signatory of the 2003 American Geophysical Union’s (AGU) statement on climate change, although he has stated that he was “very upset” by the AGU’s more extreme 2007 statement.[15] (The Top 15 Climate-Change Scientists: Consensus & Skeptics)Christy began voicing doubts about the growing climate-change consensus in the 2000s. In an interview with the BBC from 2007, he accused the IPCC process of gross politicization and scientists of succumbing to “group-think” and “herd instinct.”[16] (The Top 15 Climate-Change Scientists: Consensus & Skeptics); In 2009, he made the following statement in testimony to the House Ways and Means Committee (altogether, he has testified before Congress some 20 times):>From my analysis, the actions being considered to “stop global warming” will have an imperceptible impact on whatever the climate will do, while making energy more expensive, and thus have a negative impact on the economy as a whole. We have found that climate models and popular surface temperature data sets overstate the changes in the real atmosphere and that actual changes are not alarming. And, if the Congress deems it necessary to reduce CO2 emissions, the single most effective way to do so by a small, but at least detectable, amount is through the massive implementation of a nuclear power program.>[17] (The Top 15 Climate-Change Scientists: Consensus & Skeptics)Christy has not been shy about publicizing his views, making many of the same points in an op-ed piece he published with a colleague in 2014 in the *Wall Street Journal*.[18] (The Top 15 Climate-Change Scientists: Consensus & Skeptics)In an interview with the *New York Times* published that same year, he explains the price he has had to pay professionally for his skeptical stance toward the climate-change consensus.[19] (The Top 15 Climate-Change Scientists: Consensus & Skeptics)However, Christy stands his ground, refusing to give in to *ad hominem* attacks or the exercise of naked political power, insisting the issues must be discussed on the scientific merits alone.Christy is the author or co-author of numerous peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters (for a selection of a few of his best-known articles, see below). In 1991, Christy was awarded the Medal for Exceptional Scientific Achievement bestowed by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) for his groundbreaking work with Spencer. A Fellow of the American Meteorological Society (AMS), since 2000 Christy has been Alabama’s official State Climatologist.**Academic Website** (The Atmospheric Science Department)**Selected Publications*** ”Variability in daily, zonal mean lower-stratospheric temperatures," *Journal of Climate*, 1994, 7: 106 — 120.* ”Precision global temperatures from satellites and urban warming effects of non-satellite data," *Atmospheric Environment*, 1995, 29: 1957 — 1961.* ”How accurate are satellite ’thermometers'?," *Nature*, 1997, **3**89: 342 — 343.* “Multidecadal changes in the vertical structure of the tropical troposphere,” *Science*, 2000, **2**87: 1242 — 1245.* ”Assessing levels of uncertainty in recent temperature time series," *Climate Dynamics*, 2000, 16: 587 — 601.* ”Reliability of satellite data sets," *Science*, 2003, **3**01: 1046 — 1047.* ”Temperature changes in the bulk atmosphere: beyond the IPCC," in Patrick J. Michaels, ed., *Shattered Consensus: The True State of Global Warming*. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005.* ”A comparison of tropical temperature trends with model predictions," *International Journal of Climatology*, 2008, 28: 1693 — 1701.* ”Limits on CO2 climate forcing from recent temperature data of Earth," *Energy & Environment*, 2009, 20: 178 — 189.* ”What do observational datasets say about modeled tropospheric temperature trends since 1979?," *Remote Sensing*, 2010, 2: 2148 — 2169.* ”IPCC: cherish it, tweak it or scrap it?," *Nature*, 2010, **4**63: 730 — 732.* ”The international surface temperature initiative global land surface databank: monthly temperature data release description and methods," *Geoscience Data Journal*, 2014, 1: 75 — 102.>**3. Judith A. Curry**>Curry was born in 1953. She holds a PhD (1982) in geophysical sciences from the University of Chicago. She has taught at the University of Wisconsin, Purdue University, Pennsylvania State University, the University of Colorado at Boulder, and Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech). In 2017, under a torrent of criticism from her colleagues and negative stories in the media, she was forced to take early retirement from her position as Professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Georgia Tech, a position she had held for 15 years (during 11 of those years, she had been Chair of the School). Curry is currently Professor Emerita at Georgia Tech, as well as President of Climate Forecast Applications Network, or CFAN (see below), an organization she founded in 2006.Curry is an atmospheric scientist and climatologist with broad research interests, including atmospheric modeling, the polar regions, atmosphere-ocean interactions, remote sensing, the use of unmanned aerial vehicles for atmospheric research, and hurricanes, especially their relationship to tornadoes. Before retiring, she was actively researching the evidence for a link between global warming and hurricane frequency and severity.Curry was drummed out of academia for expressing in public her reservations about some of the more extreme claims being made by mainstream climate scientists. For example, in 2011, she published (with a collaborator) an article stressing the uncertainties involved in climate science and urging caution on her colleagues.[20] (The Top 15 Climate-Change Scientists: Consensus & Skeptics)After having posted comments along these lines on other people’s blogs for several years, in 2010, she created her own climate-related blog, Climate Etc. (see below), to foster a more open and skeptical discussion of the whole gamut of issues involving climate change/global warming. She also gave testimony some half dozen times between 2006 and 2015 to Senate and House subcommittees, expressing in several of them her concerns about the politicization of the usual scientific process in the area of climate change. Writing on her blog in 2015 about her most-recent Congressional testimony, Curry summarized her position as follows:>The wickedness of the climate change problem provides much scope for disagreement among reasonable and intelligent people. Effectively responding to the possible threats from a warmer climate is made very difficult by the deep uncertainties surrounding the risks both from the problem and the proposed solutions.>The articulation of a preferred policy option in the early 1990’s by the United Nations has marginalized research on broader issues surrounding climate variability and change and has stifled the development of a broader range of policy options.>We need to push the reset button in our deliberations about how we should respond to climate change.>[21] (The Top 15 Climate-Change Scientists: Consensus & Skeptics)Finding herself denounced as a “climate change denier” and under intense pressure to recant her views, in 2017 Curry instead took early retirement from her job at Georgia Tech and left academia, citing the “craziness” of the present politicization of climate science. She continues to be active in the field of climatology through her two blogs and her many public lectures.Curry is the author or co-author of more than 180 peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters, as well as the co-author or editor of three books (see below). She has received many research grants, been invited to give numerous public lectures, and participated in many workshops, discussion panels, and committees, both in the US and abroad. In 2007, Curry was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).**Academic Website** (Judith Curry's Home Page)**Professional Website** (JUDITH CURRY | strip-header-layout)**Personal Website** (Climate Etc.)**Selected Books*** *Thermodynamics of Atmospheres and Oceans* (Academic Press, 1988)* *Encyclopedia of Atmospheric Sciences* (Academic Press, 2003)* *Thermodynamics, Kinetics, and Microphysics of Clouds* (Cambridge University Press, 2014)>**4. Richard S. Lindzen**>Lindzen was born in Webster, Massachusetts, in 1940. He holds a PhD (1964) in applied mathematics from Harvard University. He is currently Professor Emeritus in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences at MIT.Already in his PhD dissertation, Lindzen made his first significant contribution to science, laying the groundwork for our understanding of the physics of the ozone layer of the atmosphere.[22] (The Top 15 Climate-Change Scientists: Consensus & Skeptics)After that, he solved a problem that had been discussed for over 100 years by some of the best minds in physics, including Lord Kelvin, namely, the physics of atmospheric tides (daily variations in global air pressure).[23] (The Top 15 Climate-Change Scientists: Consensus & Skeptics)Next, he discovered the quasi-biennial oscillation (QBO), a cyclical reversal in the prevailing winds in the stratosphere above the tropical zone.[24] (The Top 15 Climate-Change Scientists: Consensus & Skeptics)Then, Lindzen and a colleague proposed an explanation for the “superrotation” of the highest layer of Venus’s atmosphere (some 50 times faster than the planet itself), a model that is still being debated.[25] (The Top 15 Climate-Change Scientists: Consensus & Skeptics)The idea for which Lindzen is best known, though, is undoubtedly the “adaptive infrared iris” conjecture.[26] (The Top 15 Climate-Change Scientists: Consensus & Skeptics)According to this model, the observed inverse correlation between surface temperature and cirrus cloud formation may operate as a negative feedback on infrared radiation (heat) build-up near the earth’s surface. According to this proposal, decreasing cirrus cloud formation when surface temperatures rise leads to increased heat radiation into space, while increasing cirrus cloud formation when surface temperatures decline leads to increased heat retention — much as the iris of the human eye adapts to ambient light by widening and narrowing. If correct, this phenomenon would be reason for optimism that global warming might be to some extent self-limiting. Lindzen’s hypothesis has been highly controversial, but it is still being discussed as a serious proposal, even by his many critics.Lindzen was a Contributor to Chapter 4 of the 1995 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Second Assessment, and to Chapter 7 of the 2001 IPCC Working Group 1 (WG1). Nevertheless, in the 1990s, Lindzen began to express his concern about the reliability of the computer models upon which official IPCC and other extreme climate projections are based. He has been especially critical of the notion that the “science is settled.” In a 2009 *Wall Street Journal* op-ed, he maintained that the science is far from settled and that “[c]onfident predictions of catastrophe are unwarranted.”[27] (The Top 15 Climate-Change Scientists: Consensus & Skeptics)For his trouble, Lindzen has suffered the usual brutal, *ad hominem* attacks from the climate-change establishment.Lindzen is author or co-author of nearly 250 peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters, as well as author, co-author, or editor of several books, pamphlets, and technical reports (see below). He is a Member of the US National Academy of Sciences (NAS) and the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the American Geophysical Union (AGU), and the American Meteorological Society (AMS).**Academic Website** (http://www-eaps.mit.edu/faculty/lindzen.htm)**Selected Books*** *Atmospheric Tides* (D. Reidel, 1970)* *Semidiurnal Hough Mode Extensions in the Thermosphere and Their Application* (Naval Research Lab, 1977)* *The Atmosphere — a Challenge: The Science of Jule Gregory Charney*(American Meteorological Society, 1990)* *Dynamics in Atmospheric Physics* (Cambridge University Press, 1990)>**5. Nir J. Shaviv**>Shaviv was born in Ithaca, New York, in 1972, but was raised in Israel. He holds a doctorate (1996) in physics from the Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa. He spent a year as an IBM Einstein Fellow at the highly prestigious Institute for Advanced Study inShaviv first made a name for himself (see his 1998 and 2001 papers, below) with his research on the relationship between inhomogeneities in stellar atmospheres and the Eddington limit (the equilibrium point at which the centrifugal force of stellar radiation production equals the centripetal force of gravitation). This theoretical work led to a concrete prediction that was later confirmed telescopically (see the 2013 *Nature*paper listed below).Of more direct relevance to the climate-change debate was a series of papers Shaviv wrote, beginning in 2002 (see below), detailing a bold theory linking earth’s ice ages with successive passages of the planet through the various spiral arms of the Milky Way galaxy, and with cosmic radiation more generally. He has also expressed his conviction that variations in solar radiation have played an equal, if not greater, role in the observed rise in mean global temperature over the course of the twentieth century than has human activity (see his 2012 paper, below). He maintains, not only that anthropogenic greenhouse gases have played a smaller role in global warming than is usually believed, but also that the earth’s climate system is not nearly so sensitive as is usually assumed.In recent years, Shaviv has become an active critic of the results and predictions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and other organizations supporting the consensus view. In particular, he rejects the often-heard claim that “97% of climate scientists” agree that anthropogenic climate change is certain and highly dangerous. Shaviv emphasizes (see the video clip, below) that “science is not a democracy” and all that matters is the evidence for these claims — which he finds deficient.Shaviv is the author or co-author of more than 100 peer-reviewed journal articles or book chapters, of which some of the most important are listed below.**Academic Website** (Racah Institute of Physics)**Selected Publications*** ”Dynamics of fronts in thermally bi-stable fluids," *Astrophysical Journal*, 1992, **3**92: 106 — 117.* ”Origin of the high energy extragalactic diffuse gamma ray background," *Physical Review Letters*, 1995, 75: 3052 — 3055.* ”The Eddington luminosity limit for multiphased media," *Astrophysical Journal Letters*, 1998, **4**94: L193 — L197.* ”The theory of steady-state super-Eddington winds and its application to novae," *Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society*, 2001, **3**26: 126 — 146.* ”The spiral structure of the Milky Way, cosmic rays, and ice age epochs on Earth," *New Astronomy*, 2002, 8: 39 — 77.* ”Celestial driver of Phanerozoic climate?," *GSA Today*, July 2003, 13(7): 4 — 10.* ”Climate Change and the Cosmic Ray Connection," in Richard C. Ragaini, ed.,* International Seminar on Nuclear War and Planetary Emergencies: 30th Session: Erice, Italy, 18 — 26 August 200*3. Singapore: World Scientific, 2004.* ”On climate response to changes in the cosmic ray flux and radiative budget," *Journal of Geophysical Research*, 2005, **1**10: A08105.* ”On the link between cosmic rays and terrestrial climate”, *International Journal of Modern Physics A*, 2005, 20: 6662 — 6665.* ”Interstellar-terrestrial relations: variable cosmic environments, the dynamic heliosphere, and their imprints on terrestrial archives and climate," *Space Science Reviews*, 2006, **1**27: 327 — 465.* ”The maximal runaway temperature of Earth-like planets”, *Icarus*, 2011, **2**16: 403 — 414.* ”Quantifying the role of solar radiative forcing over the 20th century," *Advances in Space Research*, 2012, 50: 762 — 776.* ”The sensitivity of the greenhouse effect to changes in the concentration of gases in planetary atmospheres," *Acta Polytechnica*, 2013, 53(Supplement): 832 — 838.* ”An outburst from a massive star 40 days before a supernova explosion," *Nature*, 2013, **4**94: 65 — 67.

I quote below some excerpts from my book, “Harappa Civilization: Who are the Authors?” which throw light on Sarasvati River. The excerpted texts speak for themselves: the Sarasvati River is not the Ghaggar and its original namesake is found in Afghanistan. It is a mythical river.The references to the river Sarasvati found in the oldest literature, the Rig Veda come in handy for the adherents of Vedic-Harappa going even to the extent of changing the nomenclature of the Harappa or Indus civilization to Sarasvati civilization, knowing full well that it goes against established archaeological norms or practices. This act of some scholars reflects their intention to tame historical records to suit the prevalent political, social and religious weather of the country. It is customary to name an archaeological complex by the name of the first excavated site and therefore the civilization that lay buried for millennia is named after Harappa but when subsequent excavations at sites like Mohenjo-daro and Mehrgarh revealed cultural affinities to Harappa some scholars to avoid confusion call the complex as Indus, as all these sites are located on the vast Indus basin.Generally it is referred to as Harappa civilization. While some in India refer to it as Sarasvati civilization, people in Pakistan term it as Hakra culture, exhibiting a clear understanding of the difference between culture and civilization. The refreshing news is that the scholars in Pakistan without religious or national connotation distinguish Harappa civilization from Hakra culture marginally. The civilization, that rose gradually grew tremendously and disappeared suddenly, is being viewed with a microscope of religious and regional bias now. The Harappans, some of them, after the decline of their civilization dispersed to the north, east and to south during which time, that is, around 1900 BCE, the Indo-Aryans entered present day Afghanistan. From there they migrated to the sapta sindhva area which period coinciding with the composition of the RV is conventionally dated to 1500-1200 BCE.Still other writers claim that the Aryans could not have entered the Sindh region not earlier than 1000 BCE. This date does not evoke much controversy but for the few, who on the basis of unreliable astronomical data place it before the evolution of mature Harappa period, say 3000 BCE. For some writers it is necessary that the Aryans were autochthons of India because it renders easier of bridging the gap between the Hindu masses divided ethnically as the Aryans, the Dravidians, the Australoids and the Mongoloids and to pit them against the other religious minorities who can be labelled as intruders. Past history is being tailor-made to fit the present political compulsions. G.L.Possehl, an archaeologist, postulates that the migration of the Aryans happened 1000 years after the decline of Harappa.It is probable that the stay in Afghanistan might have lasted for a longer period, for the RV well exhibits knowledge of the geography of the region. It refers to Kabul (kubha), Kurrum (krumu), Swat (suvastu), Saryu (hairud), Sarasvati (haraxaiti), Gomal (gomti) etc. Though differences are there among scholars in fixing the dates they are unanimous in that the Aryans had come to India from the northern steppes. To counter this consensus and to covet the authorship of Harappa for the Aryan immigrants the issue of the river Sarasvati is brought in. The word Sarasvati means `she with many pools` and the term also cognates with Greek swamp and German sumpf,water-logged ground which to a greater extent pictures the state of the river in ancient as well present times if the status of the river with which it is associated is any indicator.Some suggest a meaning of `to run` banking upon the meaning of the root word sara but Mayrhofer does not think that a connection exists between the two words and suggests sarasi, stagnant pool from a reference in the RV (…as on a dry skin lying in the pool`s bed…-7.103.2). Prof. Ashoke Mukherjee of Calcutta University sees the term Sarasvati as an adjective ‘qualifying something as being full of water’ which need not necessarily mean a river but any water body. Witzel says that Sarasvati is the feminine form of Sarasvant which name occurs in the RV as the keeper of heavenly waters (RV 7.96.4/ 10.66.5). In 1927 Hermen Lommel had first speculated that Sarasvati is cognate to Haraxaiti, as Iranian H corresponds to Vedic S. He referred to an Avestan mythological river, sura anahita, which points to an already proto-Indo-Iranian myth of a cosmic river Sarasvati. In the later Avesta Haraxaiti is identified with a region infested with rivers and the early Persian cognate Harahuvati was identified with the Helmand river system. The reference to a region rich in rivers fits well both to the Helmand system and to sapta sindhva system of the northwest. Other meaning of the term Sarasvati renders `praise utterance` signifying eulogy. This cannot mean a river, can possibly refer to goddess. In the fourth book alone there are no referral verses on Sarasvati; all other books contain verses on Sarasvati. Seventy two references are there in the Rig Veda. However, barring a few, it is not clear if the hymns praise the river Sarasvati or goddess Sarasvati, it is inexplicably merged.Ambitame, naditame, devitame SarasvatiAprasasta iva smasi prasastim amba naskrita (RV 2.41.16)“O, Sarasvati, you the best of mothers, the best of rivers, the best of Gods! Although we are of no repute, mother, grant us distinction.” Though it is perceived by some as a praise of a river, it is manifestly evident that it extols goddess Sarasvati viewing her as best of mothers, best of rivers and best of gods. The river, note, is not personified as god but the opposite- goddess is personified as a river, any river not just the river in discussion. Therefore the river may mean the Indus or Sutlej or any other river one wishes to consider holy. Now let us see some of the verses that give a description of the river Sarasvati. The loudly roaring Sarasvati flow “swelling with volume of their water” (RV 7.36.6), “bursting with her strong waves the ridges of the hills” (RV 6.61.1) and moving swiftly “with a rapid rush comes onward with tempestuous roar” (RV 6.61.8).It is described as flowing “swifter than the other rapid streams” (RV 6.61.13). It is also described as a river “pure in her course from mountains to the sea” (RV 7.95.2) which raises a debate over the term used to refer to sea, samudra- whether it really means sea at the time when the RV was composed. Witzel remarks it was not so and gives the meaning splitting the word as sam and udra, water in a jar, small pool, large lake, etc. He also cites the Rig Vedic hymn addressed to Indra-Soma (6.72.3) – “Ye urged to speed the currents of the rivers and many samudra, have ye filled full with waters”- in support of his claim that samudra means a terminal lake or confluence of rivers. On etymological ground, according to Macdonell, samudra in the Rig Veda means “collection of waters”.He further remarks that “…indeed the word sindhu (river) itself in several passages of the RV has practically the sense of samudra”, that is, a vast body of waters. Even the natives of the Indus region, in his times, he reports, speak of the river as the `sea of Sindh`, for if a ship sails in the middle of the river it could not be seen from the banks; the river is so wide as to make it appear a samudra (p.143. A history of Sanskrit literature by AA.Macdonell;2004, Kessinger Publishing). As far as Monier Williams is concerned samudra primarily means `gathering together of waters` which point to the fact that the term in Rig Vedic times did not mean ocean. G.V.Davane has however understood the term as meaning a terrestrial ocean, a dry-land lake. He says that the term<em> samudra</em> is used to refer to lakes in arid areas which even today have parallels in Tamilnadu where names of places like Ravanasamudram, Petralsamudram, and Kalasamudram abound in.The word salt finds no mention in the Rig Veda which supports the logical argument that the term samudra refers not to the sea. Madhav Deshpande thinks that the word means a river with waves, which is not palatable to many scholars although it fits quite well with what Sindh, was referred to a century or two before. At times the word, samudra seems mythological - “the sea under and the sea above us” (RV 7.6.7) and “…his home in eastern and in western sea” (10.136.5).Therefore it is understood that at the time when the term samudra was conceived it actually meant a vast body of waters. Why so much semantic warring over a word? The answer is tied to the condition of the river Sarasvati; the Vedic river is altogether effaced from the earth as indicated in the later literature and the geography and at the same time some associate it with an ephemeral river Ghaggar which instead of draining into the sea drains itself into a marshy land in Bahawalpur district of Pakistan. It is believed that Vasishta the author of the words, “pure in her course from mountains to the sea” was from eastern Iran where the Haraxaiti discharges all its waters into the Hamun Lake called as samudra. Remembering this geological feature, explains Michael Witzel (Autochthonous Aryans, EJVS-7/3. 2001) that Vasishta extols Sarasvati, a namesake of Haraxaiti, as running into samudra, a lake.Though it may seem a far-fetched assumption it stands well with recent geological findings about which we shall see in another context. The unfailing Witzel cites a reference from Vadhula Brahmana (4.75) wherein the lower Sarasvati, Hakra is referred to as parisaraka and parisravati (the area surrounded by Sarasvati) words denoting delta like formations, samudra. However as stated earlier most of the references to Sarasvati are clothed in ambiguity: whether they refer to the river or the goddess? In RV (6.49.7), Sarasvati grouped with Visvedevas is described as “hero`s consort” and in another verse (6.50.12) she is invoked as a goddess besides Rudra from whom gifts and blessings are sought. In the next verse (6.50.13) “God Savitar, the Lord of the offspring of water, pouring down his dew” is extolled.But there is no link to Sarasvati and Savitar. In the verse (6.52.6), Sarasvati is referred to as one “who swells with rivers” which implies a terminal lake that receives the waters of rivers; rivers are only responsible for increase in water level which could happen only in the case of a lake. Or else it could mean a big river like the Indus which receives the waters of many tributaries. Witzel considers that the verses (6.61.1-7) indicating both a river and a goddess are not specific about geographic location and therefore it can be located anywhere, either in Afghanistan or on the night sky (Autochthonous Aryans, EJVS-7/3. 2001).If we take into consideration the fact that the Rig Veda was not composed by one sage and also the fact that it was not composed at a particular period of time, much of the hazy references to the Sarasvati can be understood as belonging to not just one river. Its composition could have extended to more than two hundred years. Therefore the references in the earlier books (say books 3 and 6) are to be treated as that of the Haraxaiti and the reference to the Sarasvati in the nadistuti is to be treated as distinct from the references in the earlier books. The later day Vedic poets fed with oral tradition of Haraxaiti in their erstwhile home identified some other river that flowed between the Yamuna and the Sutlej with the Sarasvati, the namesake of Haraxaiti that flowed in the Punjab region. It could be Tons or Sarsuti.In the nadistuti the river Indus is referred to as the “…mighty river surpassing all the streams that flow” and as a river “… rushing like a bellowing bull”. It is also referred to as the “…most active of the active”. Here the river Sarasvati is found mentioned but not extolled. We are therefore right in postulating that the references to Sarasvati do not actually belong to one river only; the references belong to more than one river and at times to even an imaginary river. The Rig Veda which extols both the river Sarasvati and the goddess Sarasvati does not contain any reference to the extinction of the river which comes in handy for some writers to declare that the RV antedates the extinction of Sarasvati and thereby Harappa which subject we shall take up lastly for discussion. Around the subject of extinction of Sarasvati whose existence itself was a matter of conjectures, new imaginative stories were spun. Jaiminiya Brahmana (2.249) reports that the river had gone under the ground. Tandya Brahmana names the place at where the river had gone under the ground as `vinasana`.However in Mahabharata which was composed nearly 1000 to 1500 years after the Veda links the disappearance of the Sarasvati to the then emerging caste divisions; it is said there that the Sarasvati unwilling to enter the land of the low-caste Nishadas and Abhiras hid herself under the earth. R.N. Iyengar, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore questions the veracity of the statements of poets by taking up references to Sarasvati in the Ramayana. In the Ayodhya Khand (chapter 71) it is reported that the rivers Ganga and Sarasvati were flowing side by side and in Yudh Khand (Chapter 22) it is stated that because of the curse of Rama angered by the southern sea, the land of the Abhiras in the northwest turned barren (It is in the land of the Abhiras the river Sarasvati went missing from the earth).In another context while tracing the western coastline of India and probable location of Dwaraka, Iyengar cites references to Sarasvati from the Mahabharata. In the Vana parva, he writes that Sarasvati appears along with Lake Pushkara, River Narmada, and Prabhasa. Here the allusion is that the river Sarasvati joins the sea. At another place the confluence of a river with the sea is given without any specific place. After about another fifty verses, vinasana, the place where the Sarasvati River went underneath the desert, is mentioned (Journal geological society of India, Vol.66,- RN.Iyengar, September, 2005). Then are we to infer that the Sarasvati that disappeared at vinasana reappeared in Gujarat to join the sea? Conversely can we presume that the river after disappearance as stated in the Brahmanas resurfaced and ran beside the Ganga only to die fourteen years (banishment period of Rama) later in the east and to die again to make the northwest barren?The poets are also humans and they also do err. If it is conceded that the Sarasvati and the Ganga ran next to each other, what had happened to Yamuna? Was it that the Sarasvati joined the Yamuna contrary to popular belief that Yamuna was a tributary of Sarasvati and that it shifted to the east deserting Sarasvati? Or was it that Yamuna seemed to be the holy river Sarasvati to the poet? Another of one such confusing statement from the Varaha Purana: Vasishta unbearable with the loss of his son tried to commit suicide. He jumped into the river Sutudri, Sutlej to kill himself but the river knowing his greatness turned itself into small ponds so that Vasishta survive swirling currents of the river. This stands in contradistinction to the messages delivered in the Rig Vedic verses 3.33.1 (Like two bright mother cows who lick their youngling Vipas and Sutudri speed down their waters…) and 10.75.4 (…so, Sindh unto thee the roaring rivers run…) wherein the river Sutlej is referred to as flowing quietly and not dissipating into pools. The tenth book of the Rig Veda succeeds Vasishta and the third book is contemporaneous. There is another mythological explanation for the disappearance of the river Sarasvati. In the Chaitraratha parva of Mahabharata, it is reported that sage Kavasa Ailusa, on being insulted by fellow sages as dasiputra and was excommunicated, had become angry and walked away with the river Sarasvati.Kuiper and Witzel suggest that this Kavasa Ailusa seem on linguistic grounds to be a Dravidian. A non-Aryan sage was made responsible for the loss of Sarasvati. The contradictory nature of stories reveal the importance accorded to a mythical river and the very predominant nature of mythical characterization raises doubts over the very existence of the river. With an imaginary character a writer can play havoc but with a real character he has no such luxury. It is claimed that the Indo-Aryans transporting themselves from eastern Iran to northwestern India transported names of rivers too. Haraxaiti is represented by Sarasvati, Harayo (hairud) is by Sarayu and Gomal is by Gomti. Sarayu and Gomti are the rivers in the Gangetic plains where the entry of the Aryans happened very much later. The French scholar Burnouf was the first to identify common origin for names Haraxaiti and Sarasvati and for the other two names as well. He observed the district of Harayo mentioned in the Vendidad where the river Harayo or Hairud flows is identical with the river name Sarayu in India and that Harayo is the most ancient form of the word as far as vowels are concerned and remarked that the Aryans moved into India from the northwest (Indian Caste by John Wilson, p. 84/85, 2000 Elibron Classics).This etymology of the river Harayo again proves that the migration of the Aryans took place from the west to the east and not otherwise as sought to be proved by some writers. The river Haraxaiti has been a favorite of the Aryans and so even after their migration to the northwest of India, they, finding some resemblance with a river here - that of losing itself in the marshy lands-name it as Sarasvati for it etymologically means a lake (Indian Caste by John Wilson, p. 84, 2000 Elibron Classics).). It may also be a coincidence that an imaginary or mythical river namely Sarasvati, a reminiscent of Haraxaiti, corresponds with an ephemeral river Ghaggar that debouches into the desert of Cholistan. Or did they actually name a small river Sarsuti, a corrupt form of Sarasvati, after their life-giving river the Haraxaiti of Afghanistan?The Rig Veda is quite familiar with the geography of the eastern Iran, that is, present day Afghanistan which is very revealing in the description of the river Sarasvati as at times one is confused if it is referred to Afghan Sarasvati or Indian Sarasvati. Hans Hock, professor of linguistics in Illinois University, U.S.A., has remarked that though the references to river Sarasvati in the Rig Veda can to some extent be ascribed to the river Sarasvati of India, it also seems at times that it relates to the Haraxaiti of Afghanistan. He writes that references in Vajasaneyi Samhita (34.11) to about five rivers joining the Sarasvati do not seem to indicate to the Sarasvati of India but its namesake the Haraxaiti. Sarsuti or Ghaggar are not fed by five tributaries.Asko Parpola in an essay on human sacrifice quotes the approximate date of the Vajasaneyi Samhita as around 700 BCE and according to him it is distanced from the Rig Veda later by about 500 years (P.158. The Strange World of Human Sacrifice by Jan E. Bremmer; 2007, Peeters Publishers). Therefore one cannot be certain of things said in the ancient books; they could be based on hearsays or on traditional knowledge handed down by ancestors or purely of imaginary accounts but certainly based not on first-hand knowledge. If it were the information handed down by ancestors then it could be of a description on the Haraxaiti of Afghanistan as suggested by Hock. We are not sure of it; however the fact that the poets had gone wild with imagination is beyond doubt. Prof. Irfan Habib lists the five rivers that join the Helmond strengthening the suggestion of Hock as found in Vajasaneyi Samhita: the Rasa, Kubha, Swastu, Krumu and Gomal. When Sarasvati is associated with seven rivers as sapta svasa, `with seven sisters` (RV 6.61.10 /12), it seems that it also does not fit with the Sarasvati river of India but matches well with the seven rivers of the Avesta listed in the text of Yast (19.66-69) namely Xastra, Hvaspa, Fradada, Haraxaiti, Ustavaiti, Urva, Erezi and Zarenumati, totaling eight legitimizing the epithet, sapta svasa, with seven sisters. But in the nadistuti, Sarasvati is clubbed with nine other rivers (RV 10.75.5).And in a hymn of an earlier period (3.23.4) it is clubbed with Drishadvati and Apaya. Therefore the epithet `with seven sisters` is foreign to the Sarasvati of India whether they mean tributaries, distributaries or co-runners. Apaya is not identified; according to John Wilson “it may be the Vipapa mentioned in the Mahabharata along with Drishadvati and Vipasha” and he reports that in the RV, Viput is mentioned as equivalent to Vipasha of Mahabharata which is the Beas now (Indian Caste by John Wilson, p. 85, 2000 Elibron Classics).). If it is so the Sarasvati referred to here (3.23.4) is none other than the Sutlej which is referred to as flowing together with the Beas in a Rig Vedic hymns (3.33.1/3). The nostalgia of the Haraxaiti lingers on and the Aryans see the Sarasvati or Haraxaiti in every river. The fact that the Aryans even after their departure for some centuries had not forgotten their erstwhile home of Afghanistan is brought out by the mention of Afghan river names in the tenth book also which is younger in age. A nostalgic faint memory, a highly creative yet an imaginary appreciation of a river and an on the spot description of a new river in the new found land summarize the picture of the Sarasvati in the RV.Dr. Rajesh Kochhar who is of the opinion that major part of the Rig Veda was composed in Afghanistan advocates that transfer of river names of Afghanistan to Indian rivers indicates movement of the Aryans carrying solemn memories from the west to the east. He cites a parallel in support of his contention; the people of the Gangetic plains on reaching Assam named a tributary of Brahmaputra as Yamuna. Some protagonists of Out of India Theory suggest the movement of the Aryans of India from the east to the west on the basis of supposed Aryan cultural settlements on the banks of the river Sarasvati. Kochhar however negates the suggestion by bringing out the fact that the oldest sites of Harappa are to be found in Baluchistan followed by sites of next stage on the lower basin of the Indus. The sites on the lower course and on the western side of the river bed of Ghaggar are classified as belonging to mature or post Harappan period. This chronological inconsistency eliminates the possibility of movement from the east to the west in case if we were to consider the civilization as that of the Aryans. Actually it serves to discredit the contention that Harappa culture is Aryan. Though the confusion as to where the river Sarasvati had flowed is not resolved to everyone`s satisfaction, it is reasonable to conclude that the references to the said river suggest both the Afghan and Indian rivers.The Afghan original of Sarasvati, the Haraxaiti is now known as Helmond, nobody doubts it as the literary and historical records attest to it. Therefore Kochhar, Witzel and others who contend that the names of rivers in Afghanistan travelled along with the Aryans to India seem to be on solid ground. Yet it is indiscernible if the Sarasvati means an actual river, a lake or any great perennial rivers like the Ganga, the Yamuna, the Sutlej or the Indus. The satellite images of certain paleochannels found in the Ghaggar basin lend new impetus to the identification of the river Sarasvati. The satellite images taken by Landsat (USA), IRS (India), Spot (French) and radar images from European Remote Sensing Satellites were first analyzed to find ground water resources of the arid tracts of Rajasthan which then were used as tools to trace the lost river Sarasvati because some symptomatic signatures of the rivers were sensed.After this development political and religious scholars had entered the scene to divert the research into one of singing the glory of the supposed lost river. Some of the geological scientists interpret the images as palaeo-channels of lost river, Sarasvati while some express serious doubts over this diagnosis of the images. In the rediscovery of river Sarasvati, Ghaggar comes to occupy the place of Sarasvati. Up to Ottu barrage in India it is known as Ghaggar and beyond that it is known as Hakra-Nara in Pakistan. It is an ephemeral rain-water river now. Yash Pal of Geological Survey of India, Bangalore comes out with his findings that associate the Ghaggar with the Sarasvati; he almost takes it for granted that the paleochannels represent the lost river. In his scheme of things as he takes the Rig Vedic verses as wholly true, the Sutlej once flowed into the present Ghaggar River and at some point of time the Sutlej had taken a westward turn near Ropar in Haryana indicating a diversion in its course.Near Shatrana the wide bed of Ghaggar was supposed to have received the waters of another big river and near Suratgarh the small river Chautang (Drishadvati) joins the Ghaggar. He was highly receptive to the suggestion that the Yamuna also flowed into Ghaggar at the time of the Vedas. The Ghaggar branches off near Anupgarh and both the channels come to a sudden end at Marot and Beriwala (Bahawalpur district of Pakistan) and it is supposed that the Ghaggar extends from there, through Hakra channel, to Kutch. These interpretations of the satellite images by Yash Pal evoke varied responses from historians, geologists, archeologists etc. While one set of scholars who are bent on bringing back the nostalgia of the supposed extinct river Sarasvati and are enthusiastic on renaming the Harappa civilization as Sarasvati civilization welcome it as a proof of the Vedic basis for the culture of the Harappans; however there are also saner scholars who are not carried away by national and religious fervor who question the validity of the interpretations.R.C.Thakran of Delhi University observes that the satellite pictures seem to represent impressions of water pools rather than paleochannels. The supposed paleochannels begin in the north, move towards Rajasthan and get lost beyond that; had it been the image of an extinct river buried under the earth, it would have reached up to the sea as Sarasvati is reported to have run from the mountains to the sea, without any breaks. On the contrary if we consider that it is really the paleochannel of the river Sarasvati it is inconceivable to think that how such a great river, naditama, could not cut through the marsh and reach the sea. It is most unlikely that while the other mighty river, Sindh could have a confluence with the sea but the Sarasvati which is also a great river according to the poets of the Rig Veda could not do so.Therefore one is not inclined to accept the contention that it was the buried flow route of the river. He also says that remote sensing could not reveal the antiquity of the images found in the satellite pictures. Mr. Sharma, Remote Sensing Service Centre of ISRO, Jodhpur who waxed eloquent on the images identifying it with the river Sarasvati remarked as a foot note that “the ISRO scientists do not subscribe to the theory that Sarasvati is flowing as a subterranean river”. Radioactive tracer studies have shown that the flow in buried channels is measured in few tens of cubic meters per year suggesting that the flow of water is too slow to have a link with the Himalayan sources. (The Hindu dated 28.7.2002, http://Hinduonnet.com, 10.9.11).Isotope composition of fresh water in buried channels also does not reveal any signatures of glacial origin. An environmental isotope study carried out by the scientists of Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, Mumbai along the buried course of a river that lie extended in the NE-SW direction in the Jaisalmer district of Western Rajasthan, “…showed that its expected headwater connection with present day Himalayan sources to be very remote.” This result contradicts the contention of V.M.K.Puri and Verma who state in an article that the river Vedic Sarasvati has ‘scientific signatures on its origin from the glaciated Himalayas’. B.K.Bhadra et al raised doubts over the contention that the Ghaggar formed a powerful drainage system in the past and served as the main channel eulogized by the Vedic Aryans and stated that the present day topography, rainfall, and drainage of the region do not support the hypothesis of Puri and Verma (p.273–288. Sarasvati nadi in Haryana……….ground based information, 2009 by Bhadra et al).Moreover it is found by the scientists of BARC that the waters in the aquifers were recharged by rains during the Holocene epoch. The scientists correlating the data obtained from a study conducted in the area across the border in Pakistan covering the dry bed of Ghaggar with the data obtained from the ground waters of the buried channel in India come to the conclusion that the ground waters of the buried channel do not seem to have originated from the Ghaggar which again discounts the possibility of Ghaggar being a perennial river in the remote past. M.A. Geyh and D.Ploethner in a paper published in Geological Society of London have stated that the fresh ground water found in a pocket in the Cholistan Desert of Pakistan, “… was indirectly recharged during flash floods in low lands during the last pluvial period” rather than directly replenished by the waters of the glaciated mountains far in the east (p.99–109, Origin of a fresh groundwater body in Cholistan, Geological society of London, vol.288. Bu MA.Geyh and D.Ploethner).Therefore the Himalayan origin of the river Sarasvati and the buried channels are to be established anew if at all there is any evidence apart from the Rig Veda. As connection with the Ghaggar to the buried channel is also ruled out, the paleochannel could not have been a part of not only the Ghaggar but also the Sarasvati with which the Ghaggar is identified. While discussing about the river Sarasvati, one would come across names like C.F. Oldham, R.D. Oldham, Raikes, Wilhelmy, Aurel Stein etc. In 1874, C.F. Oldham of the Survey of India wrote that Sutlej had discharged its waters in the bed of the Ghaggar and in 1886, R.D. Oldham of Geological Survey of India stated that the river Yamuna in the recent geological times (during Pleistocene or 1.7 million years ago) and the river Sutlej later on (during Holocene or 10000 yrs. BP) fed the Ghaggar. However satellite images disprove the Yamuna theory.In 1932, Whitehead, an archeologist stated that the Sutlej could not have moved 70-80 miles east to feed the Ghaggar. M.H. Panhwar, a ground water expert from the Sindh province of Pakistan, stated in 1963 that there was no sweet water along the course of Nara (lower section of Ghaggar) right up to Sindhri in the Rann of Kutch which proves according to him that no perennial rivers ever flowed into the Nara or Nara had ever been a perennial river. The Nara received only occasionally spill waters from the Indus and the Sutlej. He further emphasized that “during mid and late Pleistocene the Sutlej was an independent river”. (Muhammad Hussain Panhwar (M. H. PANHWAR) Welcome to Panhwar.com- 14.9.2011). It is quite likely that had the Sutlej or the Yamuna flowed into the Ghaggar it would have reached the sea cutting past the desert which was not the case. Suraj Bhan states that neither the Yamuna nor the Sutlej did ever flow as tributaries of Ghaggar. Therefore the probability of linkages between the Sutlej and Ghaggar does not arise. Before proceeding any further it would be in place to see what Thakran says. He attributes two characteristics to the perennial rivers: The perennial rivers carry large quantities of sands on their beds and potable water under the ground which gets replenished through seepage. He further remarks that the pastoralist Aryans would not have known the technique of taming a big river and so chose to live on the banks of a small river and hail it as a great river as the poetic convention demands. (http://www.hindunet.org/sarasvati/riddle.htm).As far back as in 1968, Raikes stated that the river Yamuna was alternatively captured by the Indus and the Ganges systems and Wilhelmy in 1969 contended that the Yamuna shifted westwards and flowed into the western Yamuna canal and was known as Drishadvati. Wilhelmy unaware of the recent origin of Western Yamuna Canal had formulated such a theory which is debunked now. The Western Yamuna Canal was in fact constructed by Firoze Shah Tuglaq who was the Sultan of Delhi between 1351 CE and 1388 CE. Later on, while studying the river system of the Drishadvati, Kar and Ghose showed that there is no evidence to suggest that “the Yamuna formerly flowed westward”(P.221–229, The Drishadvati nadi system…new findings. The geographical journal, vol.150. no.2 July 1984 by A.Kar and B.Ghose). Furthermore, a recent study of the stratigraphy and geomorphology of the Yamuna canals has drawn attention to the fact that the Yamuna River has been confined within its meandering course and flood plain throughout the Holocene epoch and that it could not have flowed westward to feed into the Ghaggar River as postulated by some workers (p.123–130, Late quaternary geomorphic significance of terminal fan. Journal of the Indian society of remote sensing, 34, 2006-G.S.Srivastava et al). Also the presence of Yamuna Fault along the west bank of the river Yamuna discredits the possibility of westering. Farooq Ahmed, Dept. of Geology, University of Lahore, in his doctorate thesis paper on ‘Socio-Economic dimension and ecological destruction in Cholistan’ affirms that the river Sutlej had never supplied waters to the Ghaggar-Hakra which remains a rain-fed river since millennia and had received only spill waters from the Indus at the tail end of the stream which is known as Nara.Had there been in existence any such union between the Ghaggar-Hakra and the Sutlej then sweet waters would have been there in the basin of the Ghaggar-Hakra, as pointed out by Panhwar. With regards to the supposed linkage of the Sutlej with the upper Ghaggar in Late Pleistocene to Mid-Holocene epochs, no any large paleochannel befitting the Sutlej to the west of the upper Ghaggar is evidenced to show that it traveled southwards instead of turning westward near Ropar. Suvrat Kher, a sedimentary geologist writes in a blog that the alluvial fan belt between the rivers Yamuna and Sutlej was built by depositions of ephemeral streams from the Sivaliks and there is no evidence of any large trunk of a river having ever flowed through the fan. He further says that the satellite images do not reveal any link between the Ghaggar and the Sutlej through any of the palaeo channels (Rapid uplift by Suvrat Kher, 21 January 2010). The satellite images as well as the sediment studies do not indicate a link between the present bed of the Sutlej and the upper Ghaggar. If the linkages of Ghaggar-Hakra with the Sutlej and the Yamuna are to be firmly established one sure factor to be considered is the alluvium. The rivers Sutlej and Yamuna originate in the glaciated Himalayas whereas the Ghaggar originates in the Sivalik Hills, a mountain range that rises to about 600-1200 mtrs that lie south of the Lesser Himalayas which again lie south of the Great Himalayas.Therefore the differences in the constitution of the alluvium would indicate whether the G-H had ever a union with the rivers Sutlej and Yamuna. Let me cite some scientific analytical reports here. Prof. Irfan Habib in his famous essay, “Imagining River Sarasvati: A defense of commonsense”, has cited a report of explorations of the hydrology of the Ghaggar by an Indo-French team. The exploratory team headed by Marie Agnes Courty reported that the alluvium of a large river was not found on the bed of the Ghaggar up to a depth of eight meters. This shows that there have been no flows from major rivers like the Sutlej or the Yamuna into the Ghaggar. Further evidence for the non-perennial character of the river Ghaggar comes from the geological findings of A.B. Roy and S.R. Jakkar who citing the findings of Rajaguru and Badam concludes that the river Ghaggar was never a mighty perennial river during the Harappan times and that there is no evidence that it ever had a flow pattern matching the Rig Vedic Sarasvati.The width, running from three kilometers to eight kilometers at certain places, of the river Ghaggar is, they think, over stressed for in actuality flood-drain channels are usually wider as they have to compensate the lack of depth. They also contend that the apparent consensus among some scholars on the recognition of the river system Ghaggar-Hakra-Nara as the relic courses of the Vedic Sarasvati “represent a case of mistaken identity”(Late quaternary.extinction the vedic Sarasvati. Current science vol.81, no.9; 10.11.2011 by AB Roy). Suraj Bhan maintains that the morphology and Landsat images of the Ghaggar-Hakra indicate no linkage with the stream Nara and Rann of Kutch. Actually Hakra disappears near Beriwala and Marot in Cholistan. The name of the town Derawar where the river Nara flows at ground level without any banking bounds actually means taraiaru, ground-river in Tamil which got corrupted as Derawar. This is yet another evidence for the existence of the Dravidians in the northwest in the period of the Indus civilization. Dorian Fuller of Institute of Archeology, University college of London who studied the climatic aspect for the decline of the Harappa civilization has come out with some startling revelations. He says that the river Ghaggar was losing a consistent year round water supply during the Harappa times itself and that the “Harappa urbanism emerged on the face of a prolonged trend towards declining rainfall”.Therefore climate cannot be a cause for the collapse of Harappa. It is therefore unacceptable the view of some scholars that there prevailed “climatic and environmental stability since the mid-Holocene in the region”. Mid-Holocene wet phase came to an end by the time of the establishment of the Mature Harappan civilization of the second half of the third millennium BCE. In the report the authors, Madella and Fuller cite McKean with respect to the climate of Balakot, a Harappan site west of Karachi, who stated that “there is nothing in the Balakot pollen data which might suggest that the climate during the protohistoric period in the Las Bela was decidedly wetter than at present” (Palaeocology and the Harappan civilisation…..Quaternary Science Reviews, 25 .2006-by Marco Madella and Dorian Fuller).Therefore there is nothing to show that the rivers played a crucial role in the development of the Harappan civilization. The arguments that the Sarasvati with full flow had made it possible for the Harappans raise an urban civilization go without any basis. Even Raikes who had suggested the capture of the Yamuna by the Ganges and the Indus alternatively, claimed that the climate of Baluchistan and the Indus Valley were not materially different today from those of the past. Courty also reveals that ‘climatic conditions have actually fluctuated very little since the proto-historic period and have therefore remained semi-arid’ (P. 289, Scandinavian institute of Asian studies, Occasional papers no.4, London, 1989- by VMK.Puri et al). So the contention that a perennial river like the Sarasvati only enabled a civilization to take birth, grow and mature becomes very tenuous and the euphoria created over such possibility turns futile. It also turns out that the river Sarasvati neither could have been a great river nor could have lost its glorious water-run days in the remote past. Either it was a minor river or a mythical one. Francfort, a member of the 1992 expedition team formed to conduct studies on the irrigation system and peopling of Asia, considers the Rig Vedic hymns on Sarasvati as mythic-religious and asserts that “…when the proto-historic peoples settled in this area, no large river flowed there for a long time”.He also reveals that the palaeochannels have been there in existence since the beginning of the Holocene epoch or even earlier which fact reinforces the statement of Fuller that the Harappan urbanism germinated, grew, matured and withered in spite of the dried-up river Ghaggar (p.168–169. The quest for the origin of vedic culture-Edwin Bryant, 2004,Oxford University Press). And the palaeo channels, as claimed by the protagonists of the Vedic-Sarasvati hypothesis could not be paleo channels of the Sarasvati River which, as they claim, became extinct some two thousand years ago. So this argument of `Sarasvati sustained the Harappan Urbanism` does not hold water and further equating the Vedic Aryans with the Harappans is totally unacceptable and to say the least, off the truth. These findings also highlight the fact that we should not attach much significance and exalted meaning to the Rig Vedic hymns than what they, poetry, deserve. The knowledge of geography, flora and fauna of the Vedic people was meager.Another study, carried out by J.K. Tripathi of School of Environmental Sciences, JNU and colleagues, presents findings which embarrass those who propose an origin in the glaciated peaks for the Ghaggar to make it appear as a perennial river. The team analyzed isotopic characteristics of the sediment samples dug out from a depth of 1-9 meters deposited between 2000 to 20000 years from the river beds of the Ghaggar, the Yamuna and the Ganges. Also the sediments of dune sands and loessic (fine windblown soil) sediments of northeastern part of the Thar Desert, through which the Ghaggar flows, were also analyzed. The isotopic data do not support the suggestion of a glacial source for the Ghaggar and also the assertion that the Yamuna and the Sutlej had once flowed into the Ghaggar.The data also revealed that there was no change in the source area for the Ghaggar from a glaciated region to rainfall region which means that the Ghaggar has been flowing for the past 20000 years in the same channel-course originating from the Sivalik Hills. It is also found that the modern aerosols originating from the Thar Desert and the dust deposits are also isotopically similar to the Ghaggar and Thar sediments indicating their consanguinity. The researchers suggest that “…Harappan civilization was a true river valley civilization supported by monsoonal rainfall in the sub-Himalayan catchment, the reduction of which was responsible for the extinction of the river and the associated civilization” (Is river Ghaggar Sarasvati? Geochemical constraints. Current Science vol.87, no.8, 2004-JK.Tripathi et al).B.P. Radhakrishna, Geological Survey of India, Bangalore who has edited a book on `Vedic Sarasvati` and who along with K.S.Valdiya lends the supposed scientific base for the identification of the river Sarasvati with the present Ghaggar River, comes down on Tripathi and his team sans any research data to counter them and hints that the data of Tripathi team should have made available and analyzed for a period before 3000 BCE which fact thoroughly exposes him for he, it seems has not gone through the paper full well because the research paper details the fact that the sediments up to a period of 20000 years BP have been analyzed. Tripathi replies that the deep seated sediments could be likely older than 20000 years. He further says if the deeper sediments of the Thar Desert represent deltaic sediments of the extinct river, then the sediments could be even older than 125000 years (Is river Ghaggar Sarasvati? Reply. Current Science vol.88, no.6, 2005-JK.Tripathi et al).A team headed by Sanjeev Gupta (Geologist of Imperial College, London) carried out sediment dating near Kalibangan, located on the bank of the Ghaggar to determine when the river Ghaggar-Hakra was last an active river and “found that the river sediment deposits ceased after approximately 14000 BCE, long before the Indus Culture”. Hideali Maemoku of Hiroshima University found that the sand dunes limiting the Hakra are older than 10000 years which indicates that any river present had long since dried up by that period of time. From these studies we learn that the Ghaggar identified as the river Sarasvati was not a perennial one long time before the birth of the Indus civilization. Its perennial character and as well its Himalayan origin are not established at all.The protagonists of Vedic Sarasvati suggest that as long as the river was in full flow the emergence of the Thar Desert was not a reality there; only with the desiccation of the river the whole of its basin turned barren and became a desert. Nothing can be more far from the truth than this statement. The gravel spreads in the Thar Desert had elicited opinions from Oldham, Ghosh and Bakliwal that `mighty rivers once flowed in the desert’. However a study carried out by S.N. Rajaguru of Deccan College, Poona et al demonstrates that the gravel spreads are not due to any fluvial activity. They are all weathered lags derived from conglomerate beds with in the Lathi and Jaisalmer formations of Mesozoic Age. They are all pre-Quaternary in age (p.53–58, Science Direct, Journal of arid environments, vol.32, Jan, 1996- SN.Rajaguru).Analyzing the aeolian sedimentation of the Thar Desert, A.K. Singhvi and A. Kar disclose that “the Harappan settlements in the desert appear to be more a case of human adaptation to declining rainfall than that of improved hydrological or precipitation events”. They also show that the desert had emerged over hundred thousand years (>150 Ka) ago putting to rest the argument that the Thar Desert arose subsequent to the desiccation of the river Sarasvati. This study again negates flow of any perennial rivers in the past through the Thar Desert which has been remaining a desert since millennia with intermittent wet periods (p.371–401, The aeolian sedimentation record of Thar Desert. Earth Planet Science, 113, no.3, September 2004).Some writers say that the river Hakra joined the sea and some suggest it drained into the Berivala Lake in Marot. However it seems that these suggestions are made, without any evidence, to complement the literary references. Marot is a town in the Bahawalpur district of the Punjab province of Pakistan which is far, about 900 kms, away from the sea and there is no evidence of any palaeo-seacoast. It is estimated that around the beginning of Holocene epoch, the seas had crossed the shores but Marot escaped the fury of the sea as it is situated too far away from the sea. From about 7000 BCE, the sea has been in its place as now. This fact is confirmed by the researches of Paolo Biagi on ‘Changing the pre-history of Sindh and Las Bela coast’. Writing in a book on World archaeology he reveals that people started inhabiting the northern coast of the Arabian Sea stretching from Las Bela to Indus delta before 7000 BCE. This fact by implication means that there has been no change in the coastline which remained the same as now. Near the Fort Derawar, the single bed of the Hakra breaks up into a kind of inland delta of tiny dry channels spread out like a fan. This makes it impossible for the river to have reached up to the sea. The Ghaggar as evidenced by the geological findings did not reach the sea but lost itself in the desert. As Prof. Ashoke Mukherjee of University of Calcutta points out mighty rivers of perennial character do run through the deserts and reach the sea.The river Nile runs through the Sahara Desert for 1600 kilometers and reaches the sea without getting stagnated in the desert. Likewise the Colorado River of the USA runs for 250 kilometers in the Sonoran Desert, the hottest desert of the world before emptying into the Gulf of California. If these rivers could traverse long distances in the deserts without getting lost, why then it was not possible for the mighty river, naditama, to run through the younger and weaker desert like the Thar and meet the sea? Did any cataclysmic events have ever forced the extinction of the river Sarasvati? It is a questionable suggestion because when all other rivers have been extant why the Sarasvati alone should have become extinct?(Ashoke Mukherjee- Rig vedic Sarasvati: Myth and Sarasvati Breakthrough, vol.9, no.1, Jan 2001)M.A.Geyh and D.Ploethner of Germany in a paper presented on arid zone hydrology in Vienna stated that the paleo hydrological aspects of the Hakra river in Pakistan had revealed that there could have been no tectonic movements after 4000 yrs. BP causing the disappearance of the river Hakra as concluded by Wilhelmy in 1969 and held that ‘the disappearance of the old Hakra River is more likely due to the shift of the monsoon belt southwards’. Geyh attributes his conclusion of non-happening of any tectonic upheavals to the age and constitution of the underground waters and considers the waters as fossil (p.119-127, An applied……cholistan desert, Pakistan. IAHS publication, no.32, 1995-MA. Geyh et al). Panhwar also stated that the earthquakes would not have resulted in as even a plain as obtained now in Pakistan. Geyh upholds the view that the Ghaggar River did flow in its course for the past 15000 years without any change which implies that there had been no lost-courses for it.Other than possible explanations for the extinction of the Sarasvati offered by some scholars there is no such report of any upheaval under the earth for the last 10000 years. Also is it not surprising that all the rivers of the northwest and the Gangetic plains retain their original names except the Sarasvati? The lifeline of the Aryans, the Sarasvati which name occurs around 70 times in the Rig Veda, alone fails to retain its name but rather loses it to a ‘local desanscritized drab title of local dialect’. The supposed river Sarasvati is at present represented, as some writers want it to be, by the name Ghaggar in India and Hakra and Nara in Pakistan which seems quite odd considering the importance the Rig Veda accords to the mythical Sarasvati. Could it ever happen or would the Aryans who named small rivers in Bengal and Gujarat as Sarasvati would ever allow it to happen?The man, C.F. Oldham, who first talked of the extinct river Sarasvati, spoke of also the impossibility of its being a river having its origin in the glaciated Himalayas: “Between the Sutlej and the Yamuna there is no opening in the Himalayas through which a large river could have entered the plains” (Ashoke Mukherjee- Rig vedic Sarasvati: Myth and Sarasvati Breakthrough, vol.9.no.1, Jan 2001). The fact is that the Ghaggar was never known as Sarasvati; it was a river on whose bed and banks the dasas and the dasyus of the Harappa were flourishing even when the river was not flowing to brim. If it were to be that the Ghaggar-Hakra-Nara had ever reached the sea, the paleo channels would have extended up to the coast. Therefore as Thakran contends these supposed paleochannels that are missing after their entry into the Thar Desert are mere subterranean water signatures.According to H.S. Saini et al, the linkages with the upstream and downstream of the isolated, segmented palaeo channel of the supposed Sarasvati River, found between Fatehabad and Hoshanga, in the northwestern plains of Haryana are elusive, hinting that the postulation of Yash Pal is untenable, that is, there is no evidence of even any palaeochannels from the Himalayas down to the Ghaggar. The paleochannel remain isolated like a submerged lake without any linkages with any river courses which is essential to establish it as a palaeochannel of the lost Sarasvati River. The scholars identify three phases of fluvial activity in the area including the present. The oldest fluvial activity is dated to an age between 28 Ka and 30 Ka. To this age belong the three buried channels in the NW-SE section in the northwestern plains of Haryana. The second fluvial activity is represented by a palaeo channel which Saini et al marked as F-2 and dated between 6000 and 2900 years BP. The last phase is connected to the present Ghaggar (Reconstruction of buried channel…..to the vedic Sarasvati. Current science, vol.97.no.1; 10.12.2009.-HS. Saini et al). It is evident from the studies of Saini et al that in Haryana there was a strong fluvial regime in the period before the Last Glacial Maximum and any fluvial activity after that period is not recognizable very well. We therefore infer that the Ghaggar has been running in the proto-historic period as a rain-fed dry river as now. There is no evidence for the perennial flow and extinction of the river Sarasvati in the past 10000 years; if so does the Rig Veda lie about its existence?May be or may not be, the problem with us is that we give too much credence to the poetic description of a river to mythical proportions and build up a huge edifice upon it saying that the tribe of Aryans has had a marvelous cultural life on the banks of the river Sarasvati and were sustained by the waters of it. We take the words of the Veda to illogical end. As Prof. Ashoke Mukherjee would say that for the Vedic poets ‘…in order to sustain the myth of the existence of the river Sarasvati in face of its non-reality, it was necessary to generate another complementary myth which would explain away the visible non-existence of the river’. The poets give birth to an idea and kill the very same idea later to cover-up their fallacy.B.K.Bhadra et al doubt whether the Ghaggar could ever have formed a powerful river system in the past and served as the main channel of the Vedic Sarasvati. “The present day topography, rainfall and drainage of the region do not support the hypothesis provided by Puri and Verma” that the Ghaggar, read Sarasvati was a mighty river once. Now let us analyze another possibility. If the images really indicate a buried river, then when did the river go under the earth? John F. Shroder while discussing about the capture history of Himalayan Rivers like Soan and Ghaggar remarks that these events could have taken place in the Cenozoic age, that is, from about 65 million years before present (p.24. Himalaya to the sea: Geology, geomorphology and quaternary- John F, Schroeder; 1993, Routledge Taylor & Francis). This fact is further corroborated by Dr. Amal Kar, senior geomorphologist at the Central Arid Zone Research Institute, Jodhpur who estimates that the river flowed through the desert between one million and forty thousand years ago. However the carbon dating of the waters from the buried channels reveals that they are just 4000 years old indicating the pluvial activity for its creation(p.246. Legend of Ram: Antiquity to Janmabhumi debate by Sanujit Ghose. 2004, Bibliophile South Asia). The non-matching of dates lend the whole theory untenable. We have seen before that the isotopic studies of the waters from buried channels do not indicate any Himalayan source.The availability of ground waters indicates a prolonged wetter period 4000 years BP. The hypothetical paleo channels in fact are not flow marks of dead rivers but signatures of available ground water that remain untapped for four millennia. In the time span we come across, for the probable disappearance of the river Sarasvati, there could have been no Aryans in India because even the votaries of `pre-Harappa age for the Rig Veda` and `the association of Harappa civilization with Vedic-Sarasvati culture` do not contemplate on seeking a higher antiquity than that of say 6000-8000 BCE. People obviously fail in their attempts to make the Harappan civilization chronologically compatible with the culture of the Vedic Aryans.The adherents of the existence of the river Sarasvati cite the Rig Vedic hymn (10.75.5) which lists rivers from the east to the west starting with Ganges, Yamuna, Sarasvati, Sutlej, Ravi, Chenab, Maruvridha, Jhelum and Arjikiya in that order. Of these rivers, only the Sarasvati is not to be seen flowing terrestrially (some writers identify the river Maruvridha as a tributary of Chenab while the identification of the Arjikiya is still elusive); therefore it is conjectured that the Ghaggar could be the Sarasvati river of the Vedic period since Ghaggar is the only big river that lies dry between the Yamuna and the Sutlej rivers. Writers like Frawley, Kak, Elst and Kalyanaraman run the battle of Sarasvati for Ghaggar. These writers argue that the Vedic culture flourished from around 6000 BCE to around 1900 BCE on the banks of the river Sarasvati and met its nemesis along with the demise of the river Sarasvati. They embark, as Prof. Ashoke Mukherjee remarks, on a peculiar argument that Hakra river settlements do not constitute Harappa Civilization of non-Aryan heritage but constitute settlements of the Vedic Aryans; but if questioned how one associates these settlements with the Aryans, they would say it is because they are in the basin of Sarasvati. If you probe further that how one would ascertain that the river is the Sarasvati, the answer would gush out that it is the Sarasvati because Vedic settlements are there. Mukherjee asserts that if the Ghaggar had been the Sarasvati (as big as the Sindh or the Ganges) there would have been very few pre-iron age settlements there; instead there were a large number of sites.Harappans, in the Chalcolithic period, would not have been able to clear dense forests nurtured by perennial rivers as the Harappans were vested with stone and copper implements only. Therefore they sensibly chose to settle away from the river banks and in this case in the basin of a very weak river as the Ghaggar which was not carrying waters throughout the year and as such could not nurture dense vegetation. As such there is no logic of it being called the Rig Vedic Sarasvati. As it is proved beyond any doubt that the mature Harappan civilization had emerged, prospered and declined amidst the arid conditions which preclude the necessity of any full-flowing river, the talk of the Sarasvati supplying ‘milk and fat’ to Harappans is only a dreamy conjecture.The present and the past flow and course history of the Ghaggar do not make it eligible to occupy the seat or name of the Rig Vedic mythical Sarasvati. If we assume the Ghaggar to be the Sarasvati, then as R.S.Sharma avers, Kalibangan in Rajasthan alone can lay claim to Vedic culture. Even that possibility has been eliminated from consideration by the finding of Sanjeev Gupta about which we have seen earlier. Had the nomadic Vedic tribes really developed the Kalibangan site or for that matter the entire gamut of Harappan civilization, how is that they could not build a similar urban settlement during the intermittent 1500 years between the collapse of the Harappan civilization and the beginning of the Magadha Empire, so questions Mukherjee? Nevertheless if we apply the C-14 date of 800 BCE arrived at by D.P.Agarwal and Kusumgar for the entry of the Aryans into Rajasthan, that possibility of calling Kalibangan a Vedic site also vanishes into thin air.Malvan located on the banks of the river Tapti belongs to Late Harappan period not only that, the hundreds of sites located on the flood plains of Ghaggar also belong to Late Harappan period. Kunal site, according to R.S. Sharma is not associated with Harappa. It is to be noted with interest that Harappa located on the bank of the Ravi, MJD, Amri and Chanhudaro located on the banks of the Indus, Sutkagendor on the bank of Dast River in Baluchistan, Dholavira and Surkotada located in the Kutch and lastly the Lothal situated on the Bhogua river bank are in fact the true representatives of the Harappa civilization. The excavated sites at Mehrgarh, Kot Diji and Nausharo, situated in the Baluchistan province of Pakistan belong to pre or Early Harappa period which is rightly dated to 7000 BCE or even earlier. These sites can be termed as forerunners to the Harappan civilization.Having said these how one can justifiably argue for the sites on the Ghaggar as belonging to the Aryans. The entry of the Aryans was from the north; in that case, the sites on the Ghaggar basin could not be construed as that of the Aryans which are younger to Mehrgarh. However there is no sign of any Aryan cultural legacies found in Mehrgarh, the earliest of the Harappan sites. If it is assumed that the Aryans had spread out from the east to west and northwest the younger sites on Ghaggar cannot be ascribed to the Aryans- a tree cannot take birth without a seed or sapling; the seeded sites are located on the west. (If in case the origin and evolution of the Harappan civilization do belong to the Aryans as claimed by some writers).As said earlier these sites located on the bed of the river stand as stumbling block in the way of the people who claim authorship of Harappa for the Aryans. How could people like the Aryans, for whom water is divine, live on the dry beds of rivers and how could one simultaneously claim that waters flowed once in the extinct river which could have washed away the settlements situated on the bed altogether? It was Prof. M.R. Mughal who identified around 400 sites on the Hakra river basin in Pakistan as belonging to Harappa civilization which are cited as evidence for the domicile of the Aryans on the banks of the river Ghaggar-Sarasvati. He in fact termed it as Hakra culture. R.S. Sharma quoting Mughal remarks that around fifty late Harappa sites in Cholistan reveal Cemetery-H related materials and these contents “…symbolize the coming of new people”.A cultural site can only be a part of a great civilization and as such it is no different from Indus. It is claimed that more than thousand sites are identified along the river basin of the Ghaggar on Indian side; however none of it can be termed as belonging to Mature Harappa period, they all belong to pre or late Harappa period. Witzel highlights that all these sites where kapalas, pot-shards are found on the river-bed itself bring to mind the armaka, arma and vailasthana of the deserted places of the people like the dasas and the dasyus of the Rig Veda. It also shows that the Ghaggar-Hakra has never been a perennial river either during the birth and growth of Harappa civilization or at the time of decline when the Aryans had entered the northwest of India. As Ghaggar is a relict river it preserves sites located on its bed whereas the rivers like the Sindh, the Ravi etc. are perennial and so the periodic floods in the rivers and streams could have obliterated almost most of the sites in their basins. An excavation, carried out by Vasant Shinde and colleagues from Maharashtra at sites of supposed Hakra culture in Haryana found that “some of the sites are right in the middle of the course of the river Ghaggar” which indicates that the river went dry before the times of the Harappans. This corroborates the conclusion of Witzel.The question of the Ghaggar, the hypothetical Sarasvati, ever being a perennial river is put to rest. Do we have any evidence from the literature for the possible junction of Sutlej with Sarasvati on one hand and Sarasvati with Yamuna on the other? A Rig Vedic hymn (3.33.1/3) describes the flowing together of the rivers Sutlej and Beas as “…licking as it were their calf the pair of mothers flow”. In the nadistuti hymn (10.75.5), the river Sarasvati is placed between Yamuna and Sutlej. Therefore when the Aryans saw the river it was not aligned either with the Sutlej or with the Yamuna. If at all any such union of rivers had taken place when it could have happened? Possibly in the Cenozoic age. Asif Inam et al in an essay in a book speculate, on the sudden increase of radiogenic sediment, that the capture of the Punjabi tributaries into the Indus River shortly after 15 million years ago could be the cause of it (p.333-348, Large rivers: Geomorphology and Management. 2007, John Wiley & Sons ltd- Avijit Gupta). This fact also discounts the possibility of Sutlej having ever flowed into the Ghaggar. Then why the protagonists of Sarasvati civilization raise so much ado about the joining of rivers Ghaggar, Yamuna and Sutlej and bank on outdated and scientifically disproved theory of river piracy in the recent past, say four millennia back? They are forced to find a river in between the Yamuna and the Sutlej to match the great rivers like the Indus and the Ganges and to accord credibility to the Rig Vedic hymns.Finding no such big river, they bend science to serve them; the satellite images which are taken to identify ground water potentials are used to build up a case for the extinct river Sarasvati. It is common knowledge that subsoil palaeo channels possess stored water; but it is highly debatable if this ground water is a running channel under the earth. Some of the scientists instead of working as scientists proper become Vedic Pundits throwing all facts to winds. Instead of assessing and highlighting the ground water availability, they misrepresent the fact as if a great river Sarasvati is flowing under the ground waiting for us to redeem it and make it appear again on the face of the earth.A colossal campaign has been organized to project the Ghaggar-Hakra-Nara stream as the Vedic river Sarasvati and to misappropriate credit for the Harappan Civilization. Radiocarbon dates assign 1900 BCE as the probable date for the decline and disintegration of the Indus Civilization and the entry of the Indo-Aryans in the northwest of India are estimated at 1500 BCE-1200 BCE on the basis of linguistic studies. Therefore a period of five hundred years separates the Aryans from the declined civilization of the Harappans, postulating the impossibility of the Aryans ever having nurtured the Indus civilization.If the Ghaggar cannot be considered as the Vedic Sarasvati, then what river could be accorded the status of the Sarasvati? If we consider the later age of the tenth mandala of the Rig Veda wherein the nadistuti hymn places the Sarasvati between the Yamuna and the Sutlej, then the place of Sarasvati could be given to the river Sarsuti. References to Sarasvati River in other mandalas could be postulated as reminiscences of the Haraxaiti of their erstwhile domicile. Considering the practice of the Aryans that wherever they go they name a river in the new land after a river of their previous land, it is but natural that they named the Sarsuti after Sarasvati. As referred earlier that if we treat the Ghaggar as the Sarasvati, the loss of name poses a problem. In the whole of the northwest, the names Ghaggar, Hakra and Nara alone are not of Vedic language or not attested in the Vedas which is inconceivable to have happened to the naditame that is Sarasvati.On the contrary it is quite logical to conclude that the Aryans finding the river dry left it unnamed and uncared for as the river basin was host to the dasas and dasyus. They named a small river as Sarasvati now corrupted to Sarsuti. Viewing the occurrence of the name Sarasvati with respect to small rivers in Bengal and Gujarat it is quite appropriate to suggest that the Sarsuti was the original Sarasvati of nadistuti hymns as it also flows between the Yamuna and the Sutlej. The nadistuti hymn (10.75.5) groups the tributaries of the Indus and the Ganges without naming the great river Indus and however the tributaries of the Indus are not as great as the Yamuna and the Ganga. When these rivers are grouped together as great rivers, the Sarsuti of present times is also eligible to be grouped and that is what exactly the poets did. The Sarsuti which also originates in the Sivaliks and appears in the plains of Ad-Badri in Ambala is considered by many writers as the remnant Sarasvati.It is also a monsoonal river flowing southeast and joined by a stream called the Markanda. A study has concluded taking into consideration the satellite images and ground data that the small rain-fed river, Sarsuti had never any linkages with the Yamuna. Some suggest that the river Tons could be the lost Sarasvati because its source lies in the 20720 ft. high Bandarpunch glacial mountain and is one of the major perennial rivers which join the Yamuna below Kalsi near Dehradun. It is speculated that the river Tons was the upper portion of the river Ghaggar. However as we have shown earlier with the results of scientific studies that the Ghaggar bed does not carry any sediments of the glaciated peaks the last nail on the coffin of the theory, that the Sarasvati was fed with the waters of the Sutlej and the Yamuna, so also the Tons now, is driven.