It has not been a great week for climate change; the news has been at best mixed in the lead up to the Paris Conference.
The Carbon Brief is tracking the pledges made so far by countries around the world. Some are better than others and some have conditions attached, there is a break down here.
In the news, Ban Ki-Moon, Secretary General of the UN railed against the glacial pace of progress. As reported by the BBC one of the men tasked with drafting a new text said that even going at the pace of a mollusc, a draft agreement would be ready for Paris. Not that we heard much about it on TV or radio.
The Carbon Brief also commented on a study by Dr Ricarda Winkelmann, from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research supporting the leave it i8n the ground attitude to fossil fuels. Not that we saw much if anything of this in the media.
In Japan Reuters reported on the mass evacuation of 100,000 people in the wake of a flood and a one in fifty year rainfall event.
The Guardian highlighted a report by the Climate Action Network Europe, (CANE) on the deaths in the UK related to emissions from burning coal. The response from our politicians was non-existent.
Even the London Evening Standard got in on the act. Columnist Rosamund Urwin’s comment piece on the future if we don’t deal with Climate Change is in her own words “Apocalyptic”. While our political leaders argue over how many refugees the UK can accept, Rosamund opens her article with “Think of the boats, the bodies, the dead children. Then ask yourself: what if this refugee crisis isn’t the worst we’ll see in our lifetimes? What if, in a couple of decades, there’s an even bigger movement of mankind — one numbering not in the hundreds of thousands but the millions?”
The UK press and politicians obsessed with Jeremy Corbyn, the deficit, “immigrants”, and the supposed “workshy” ignore the long term and arguably catastrophic impact of climate change. And the UK is not alone, Australia’s immigration minister, Peter Dutton seems to think it’s hilarious.
We see little of all this outside the web and only then if you go looking for it. We are being let down by the press and our politicians.
So with refugees such a crucial topic I have no qualms about copying in here a blog from the Climate News Network.
A senior British politician says we face a humanitarian crisis on an immense scale if millions of people have to flee the impacts of global warming.
LONDON, 9 September, 2015 – The former leader of one of the UK’s main political parties says the world will undergo more resource wars and huge movements of desperate people unless it tackles climate change effectively.
Lord Ashdown, who was leader of Britain’s Liberal Democrats for 11 years, describes the present flight of refugees from Syria and other conflict areas as a “rehearsal” for the vast humanitarian disaster he believes will soon unfold.
In a recent BBC interview on the Syrian refugee crisis, he said: “This is the beginnings of the future. It’s not going to go away.
“The numbers we now have of refugees fleeing battle zones are going to be diminished into almost nothing when we see the mass movement of populations caused by global warming.”
Politicians blind
Lord Ashdown, a former marine and diplomat, known popularly as Paddy, told Climate News Network: “I raised the issue of climate refugees then because I’ve been trying for a very long time to get the international community to take some notice of them.
“I raised it to make the problem more obvious – though I do not know why politicians continue to be so blind to it.”
He said evidence of the impacts of climate change was plain to see: “You need only to fly over some of the areas that are being affected – like the Naga Hills on the border of India and Burma, or vast areas of the Ganges delta – to see clearly what’s happening.”
Tahmima Anam, a Bangladeshi writer and novelist, says that 50,000 people migrate every month to Dhaka, the capital city, because rising sea levels are making their villages uninhabitable and their arable land impossible to cultivate.
“The Syrian crisis is simply a dress rehearsal for an immense climate-fuelled disaster, which I think will begin to be felt within the next decade”
In both the UK and the US, military leaders are aware of the growing threat from climate change and expect to be ordered to react to its effects.
Lord Ashdown said: “If governments do not act, then wars over land and resources − which is what the second Iraq war was − will become more common.”
As long ago as 2003, a report prepared for the US Department of Defense warned that global climate change is more likely to result in sudden, cataclysmic environmental events than a gradual and manageable rise in average temperatures.
Such events, the report said, could include a substantial increase in global sea levels, intense storms and hurricanes, and continent-wide “dustbowl” effects, which could lead to wars for access to food, water, habitable land and energy supplies.
“Violence and disruption stemming from the stresses created by abrupt changes in the climate pose a different type of threat to national security than we are accustomed to today,” the report said.
Controversial role
Lord Ashdown foresees a direct and controversial role for military forces in the near future − not simply in fighting these wars, but also in controlling refugee flows.
Asked whether he thought the UK’s armed forces would be ordered to defend the country’s borders, or to stop refugees leaving their countries of origin, or simply to play a humanitarian role, he replied: “All of those.”
He went on: “The idea of Open Europe is now under threat. We have to discuss how we can manage the future. Can you imagine what is going to happen?
“The Syrian crisis is simply a dress rehearsal for an immense climate-fuelled disaster, which I think will begin to be felt within the next decade, perhaps within five or six years from now.”
Asked what his priorities would be for a government facing mass migration of this sort, Lord Ashdown replied: “Once the crisis is upon you, it’s too late to start working out your priorities.
“This is about forethought, the need to look ahead. And you can’t approach it on a purely British basis. It has to be an international effort consistent with our principles.”
My work background is in operational meteorology and in my career I have been involved in forecasting for everything from bananas to jumbo jets.I joined the Met Office 1974 as an observer at Glasgow Airport. After training as a forecaster, I worked as an Operational aviation forecaster at various defence sites and airports. In 1982, I moved to Glasgow Weather Centre as a forecaster and STV broadcaster till 1988. He then took up a post as Senior Forecaster London Weather Centre, then Senior Forecaster ITV where I qualified as a trainer in presentation techniques for the ITV Association. After being diagnosed with MS, he moved into management and became Head of London Weather Centre in 1997 followed by a period of front-line management for Southern England and Europe covering London and Cardiff Weather Centres and the Met Offices on defence stations from Akrotiri in Cyprus to St Mawgan in Cornwall. He took up the post of Met Office Chief Advisor for Scotland & Northern Ireland in March 2008 and moved to Edinburgh. I retired in September 2014. My one claim to fame is once performed a comedy sketch on TV with Manuel (Andrew Sachs) from Fawlty Towers in support of Comic Relief.
Or, conversely, and sadly, ” a great week for climate change” but a bad week for those hoping to alleviate/slow or halt (ha! As if…) its progress.
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