Science Climate Change and Global warming
Scientists are observing increasing evidence of changes and breakdowns in natural systems from a changing climate caused by rising carbon emissions. For the poor countries in the tropics and sub-tropics particularly, almost every observation and prediction about health, food security, water shortage, natural disasters, famine, drought, and conflict is worsening at an alarming rate.”Yvo de Boer: Speed of Climate Change Negotiations Must be Accelerated Before Copenhagen Conference in December, or We Will Not Make It
Briefing the media on the last day of the informal consultations in Bonn, UNFCCC Executive Secretary Yvo de Boer said that while selective progress had been made to consolidate the huge texts on the table, at this rate, we will not make it.He said negotiations needed to move much faster to deliver strong outcomes on areas such as adaptation, technology, building skills in developing nations. Governments needed to buckle down and concretely identify how to achieve this.
He spoke of increasing momentum at a high political level for a strong result in Copenhagen, including the G8 and Major Economies Forum. However, a concerted response to climate change was essential to meet the concerns of developing countries.
Mr. de Boer stressed that “a climate deal in Copenhagen this year is an unequivocal requirement to stop climate change from slipping out of control.
The Secretary-General’s Climate Change Summit in New York on 22 September presents an opportunity for world leaders to provide clear political guidance.
The changing global climate will pose profound strategic challenges to the United States in coming decades, raising the prospect of military intervention to deal with the effects of violent storms, drought, mass migration and pandemics, military and intelligence analysts say.
Such climate-induced crises could topple governments, feed terrorist movements or destabilize entire regions, say the analysts, experts at the Pentagon and intelligence agencies who for the first time are taking a serious look at the national security implications of climate change.
Recently, war games and intelligence studies have shown just how vulnerable to food shortages, water crises and catastrophic flooding many areas, already stressed, will become in the very near future. This includes sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and South and Southeast Asia, where US humanitarian relief or military response will likely be necessary.
“The demands of these potential humanitarian responses may significantly tax U.S. military transportation and support force structures, resulting in a strained readiness posture and decreased strategic depth for combat operations,” the report said…
“We will pay for this one way or another,” Gen. Anthony C. Zinni, a retired Marine and the former head of the Central Command, wrote recently in a report he prepared as a member of a military advisory board on energy and climate at CNA, a private group that does research for the Navy. “We will pay to reduce greenhouse gas emissions today, and we’ll have to take an economic hit of some kind.
“Or we will pay the price later in military terms,” he warned. “And that will involve human lives.”
Reports by US intelligence on the impact of dangerous climate change on countries such as India and China are being developed to study alternative fuels and ”how major power relations could be strained by a changing climate.”
Hiroshima Day, August 6, is approaching, and still, 64 years since the atomic bombs were dropped on Japan, people still join with others to remember the great loss of life that took place that week in August and to remind each other of the terrible cost of war to humanity. It would be appropriate, this August, to take heed of the major present-day threat to our civilization: Climate Wars.
Historically, wars have been, by nature, largely political and religious. Now, however, most are either directly or indirectly related to climate change, and this would include the wars for energy resources that are taking place in the Middle East. In the future, tragically, the many of wars on our Planet will be caused by lack of food, water and shelter, as many millions of desperate climate refugees are forced to flee their homes because of flooding and drought. There is the ever-present danger that one of these conflicts could escalate to nuclear war.
Climate wars will be a huge problem for all of the World’s people, especially the disadvantaged, and it appears that world leaders are at last taking notice of this.
“A secret report, suppressed by US defence chiefs and obtained by The Observer, warns that major European cities will be sunk beneath rising seas as Britain is plunged into a ‘Siberian’ climate by 2020. Nuclear conflict, mega-droughts, famine and widespread rioting will erupt across the world.
“The document predicts that abrupt climate change could bring the planet to the edge of anarchy as countries develop a nuclear threat to defend and secure dwindling food, water and energy supplies. The threat to global stability vastly eclipses that of terrorism, say the few experts privy to its contents.
“‘Disruption and conflict will be endemic features of life,’ concludes the Pentagon analysis. ‘Once again, warfare would define human life.’”
UN report: Severe climate change may now be `inevitable’“It seems that the US ruling elite is more interested in planning for a proliferation of climate change-induced wars over increasingly scarce supplies of food, water and oil than actually acting to stop climate change.
“In February 2004, Fortune magazine reported that the Pentagon’s latest planning for future wars is centred on “the eruption of desperate, all-out wars over food, water, and energy supplies”.
“The article reported that the Pentagon’s planners envisage the US building “a fortress around itself to preserve resources. Borders are strengthened to hold back starving immigrants from Mexico, South America, and the Caribbean islands — waves of boat people pose especially grim problems.”
“This the barbaric “vision” that the rulers of the world’s richest country have for dealing with the social consequences of rapid onset of global warming.”
“UK newspaper The Observer obtained a secret report by the Pentagon that projects a horrific future for the planet due to the influence of global climate change. According to the report, As early as 2020 major European cities will be lost beneath the sea and the climate of the UK will resemble the current climate of Siberia.
“Pentagon adviser Andrew Marshall commissioned The report, which paints an apocalyptic future consisting of anarchy, nuclear threats, dwindling food and water, limited access to energy–a collective threat that dwarfs terrorism. “Disruption and conflict will be endemic features of life,” the report says. “Once again, warfare would define human life.” The report also recommends that climate change “be elevated beyond a scientific debate to a US national security concern.”
The PoliticsDaily story that was “leaked” was by that time four years old.
The defititive book on the subject of possible climate conflict scenarios was published October 28, 2008. Climate Wars was written by military historian Gwynne Dyer. From Amazon’s product description:
“From one of the world’s great geopolitical analysts, a terrifying glimpse of the none-too-distant future, when climate change will force the world’s powers into a desperate struggle for advantage and even survival.
“Dwindling resources. Massive population shifts. Natural disasters. Spreading epidemics. Drought. Rising sea levels. Plummeting agricultural yields. Crashing economies. Political extremism. These are some of the expected consequences of runaway climate change in the decades ahead, and any of them could tip the world towards conflict. Prescient, unflinching, and based on exhaustive research and interviews, Climate Wars promises to be one of the most important books of the coming years.”
Dyer has just completed a three-part series of talks on Climate Wars aired by the Canadian Broadcasting Company radio program, Paul Kennedy’s IDEAS.
“Global warming is moving much more quickly than scientists thought it would. Even if the biggest current and prospective emitters - the United States, China and India - were to slam on the brakes today, the earth would continue to heat up for decades. At best, we may be able to slow things down and deal with the consequences, without social and political breakdown. Gwynne Dyer examines several radical short- and medium-term measures now being considered - all of them controversial.”
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We are now at the end of July of 2009, when interest in the political instability dangerous climate change will cause has spiked. This may be due to the recent release of numerous scientific reports from Britain and the U.S. showing Earth will become dramatically warmer during the course of this century and the recognition by world leaders that this will occur in spite of every effort we make to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Important note: The wording in current reports on climate change scenarios has changed slightly from older ones. No longer do we read, “might occur,” as the phrase used to describe future effects of dangerous climate change. “Will occur” is now used instead.
The climate wars of the future will be about resources – minerals, oil and gas- but they will also be about water, our most precious element. Rivers are drying up, and glaciers on all continents are fast diminishing, depleting drinking water supplies. Heat and drought is a reality for much of China, the entire continent of Africa and in Latin America. Oxfam reports that:
“There is potential for conflict around many rivers that run through a range of nations, especially the Indus, the Nile, and the Tigris-Euphrates. A recent study of 60 years of records of 925 major rivers, between them providing 73 per cent of the world’s water supply, found that a third of them were significantly affected by climate change, mainly in terms of diminished flow. These included the Ganges, the Niger, the Colorado, and the Yellow River.”
The IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report says that the Himalayan glaciers – which form the largest body of ice outside the polar caps and which are the source of water for the ‘innumerable rivers that flow across the Indo-Gangetic plains’ – are receding faster than in any other part of the world, primarily because of climate change. The report adds that, at their current rate, the glaciers are likely to disappear by 2035, if not sooner. The Ganges basin alone is home to 500 million people. Between one and two billion people in China face water shortages this century if supplies from the Himalayan glaciers begin to fail.Conclusion: We are talking about Climate Change and Glabal Warming
Many people in the media (and elsewhere) use the terms "climate change" and "global warming" interchangeably, as if they were the same thing. But there are differences between the meanings of the two terms. Getting a better handle on the definitions of and differences between "global warming" and "climate change" will help us understand why the threat caused by continued warming of the planet is so serious.
Global Warming — An overall warming of the planet, based on average temperature over the entire surface.
Climate Change — Changes in regional climate characteristics, including temperature, humidity, rainfall, wind, and severe weather events.
Planet Earth's current warming trend is based largely on natural warming and cooling cycles that have been happening for eons; as well as human-caused additions to greenhouse gases, which are boosting the atmosphere's ability to trap heat in the biosphere. Minor factors like an overall increase in the sun's solar intensity play a smaller role.
While greenhouse gases are an essential component of a livable planet—they're what keep Earth from being a lifeless ball of ice—humans are causing greenhouse gas levels to increase so quickly that it's causing the average global temperature to rise much faster than it would naturally.
This warming is predicted to lead to a variety of negative effects, including:
- Melting (and possible disappearance) of glaciers and mountain snow caps that feed the world's rivers and supply a large portion of the fresh water used for drinking and irrigation.
- A rise in sea levels due to the melting of the land-based ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica, with many islands and coastal areas ending up more exposed to storm damage or even underwater.
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Increasingly costly "bad weather" events such as heat waves, droughts, floods, and severe storms.
- Lowered agricultural productivity due to less favorable weather conditions, less available irrigation water, increased heat stress to plants, and an increase in pest activity due to warmer temperatures.
- Increases in vector-borne infectious diseases like malaria and Lyme Disease.
- Large numbers of extinctions of higher-level species due to their inability to adapt to rapidly changing climate and habitat conditions.
The first two of these effects are mostly related to increasing average temperatures. Items 3-6 are related to heat too, but also playing a role are non-temperature factors—i.e. "climate-change factors."
Climate change is about much more than how warm or cool our temperatures are. Whereas "global warming" refers to increasing global temperatures, "climate change" refers to regional conditions. Climate is defined by a number of factors, including:
- Average regional temperature as well as day/night temperature patterns and seasonal temperature patterns.
- Humidity.
- Precipitation (average amounts and seasonal patterns).
- Average amount of sunshine and level of cloudiness.
- Air pressure and winds.
- Storm events (type, average number per year, and seasonal patterns).
To a great extent, this is what we think of as "weather." Indeed, weather patterns are predicted to change in response to global warming:
- some areas will become drier, some will become wetter;
- many areas will experience an increase in severe weather events like killer heat waves, hurricanes, flood-level rains, and hail storms.
It's tempting to think that all of these changes to the world's climate regions will average out over time and geography and things will be fine. In fact, colder climates like Canada may even see improved agricultural yields as their seasonal temperatures rise. But overall, humanity has made a huge investment in "things as they are now, where they are now." Gone are the days of millennia ago when an unfavorable change in climate might cause a village to pack up their relatively few belongings and move to a better area. We have massive societal and industrial infrastructure in place, and it cannot be easily moved.
Climate-change effects will generally not be geographically escapable in the timeframe over which they happen, at least not for the majority of humans and species.
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