Discussion Topic
Poor will suffer more on global warming
Posted on 08/12/08, 03:21 pm
ABOUT 16 months ago, the United Nations panel on climate change cited a vast and growing divide between rich and poor nations in their ability to withstand the effects of global warming. Other experts described the same problem in graphic terms. "Like the sinking of the Titanic, catastrophes are not democratic," Henry Miller of the Hoover Institution told The New York Times. "A much higher fraction of passengers from the cheapest decks were lost. We'll see the same phenomenon with global warming."
All governments need to grapple with this problem. "If a government doesn't react to this," researcher Susanne Moser of the National Center for Atmospheric Research told the Globe, "it could be considered negligence."
Michael Glantz, a political scientist who had been warning about the divide for years, was pessimistic that no one would react. "The Third World has been on its own," he told the Times, "and I think it pretty much will remain on its own."
And if the fate of his own program is any guide, Glantz was right.
He runs the NCAR's Center for Capacity Building, which predicts the societal effects of climate change. But because of federal science budget cuts, the NCAR is shutting down the program - which costs $500,000 out of an annual budget of $120 million, according to the Times. Many scientists consider Glantz's center to be a vanguard effort to put a human face on the potential toll of climate change.
"Knowledge related to the societal dimensions of global environmental problems is fundamental to efforts to arrive at practical and effective solutions," said former NCAR scientist Roger Pielke Jr. "If anything, we need to expand attention in these areas."
Under the Bush administration, it seems, developing countries threatened by global warming are on their own. The administration that has claimed at every turn that it will not act on climate change until it has sound science, and then uses every tactic to declare sound science unsound, blew another hole in the credibility of the United States. It is an especially large hole, given how much NCAR is a go-to source on climate and climate change.
The potential of slow-motion devastation for the countries with the least technology to combat climate change increases with every report. The UN panel projects that in just the next 12 years, a more arid Africa could see 75 million to 250 million people facing increased water stress. Crop yields of rain-dependent crops could fall in some nations by half, and revenues could fall by as much as 90 percent over this century. Some forecasters worry about human migrations - refugees fleeing the effects not of war, but of a warming climate. For those who care about safaris, 25 to 40 percent of animal species in sub-Saharan national parks could become endangered.
In Asia, megadelta regions that already flood frequently are projected to suffer even more because of a rising sea level and excess of rain. "The global burden of climate-change-attributable diarrhea and malnutrition are already the largest in the world in Southeastern Asian countries, including Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Myanmar, and Nepal," one UN report said. "Illness and death are expected to increase from diarrheal diseases due to drought and flooding and are also expected from increased amounts of cholera bacteria in coastal waters."
Yet, the United States, not content with ignoring global warming as a concept, is gutting the tools to help us assist nations that as of now do not have the capital to wall off the rising waters or deal with droughts. In testimony last month before a Senate committee, Kevin Trenberth, the head of the climate analysis section of NCAR, warned that Earth "could become a different planet by 2100." He said, "rather than slowing down, the problem is accelerating. . . . There is a crisis of inaction in addressing and preparing for climate change."
By starving federal funding of sound science - to the point where NCAR has to stop measuring the effects of climate change on the people most likely to bear its worst effects - the Bush administration's conduct easily qualifies as negligence.
All governments need to grapple with this problem. "If a government doesn't react to this," researcher Susanne Moser of the National Center for Atmospheric Research told the Globe, "it could be considered negligence."
Michael Glantz, a political scientist who had been warning about the divide for years, was pessimistic that no one would react. "The Third World has been on its own," he told the Times, "and I think it pretty much will remain on its own."
And if the fate of his own program is any guide, Glantz was right.
He runs the NCAR's Center for Capacity Building, which predicts the societal effects of climate change. But because of federal science budget cuts, the NCAR is shutting down the program - which costs $500,000 out of an annual budget of $120 million, according to the Times. Many scientists consider Glantz's center to be a vanguard effort to put a human face on the potential toll of climate change.
"Knowledge related to the societal dimensions of global environmental problems is fundamental to efforts to arrive at practical and effective solutions," said former NCAR scientist Roger Pielke Jr. "If anything, we need to expand attention in these areas."
Under the Bush administration, it seems, developing countries threatened by global warming are on their own. The administration that has claimed at every turn that it will not act on climate change until it has sound science, and then uses every tactic to declare sound science unsound, blew another hole in the credibility of the United States. It is an especially large hole, given how much NCAR is a go-to source on climate and climate change.
The potential of slow-motion devastation for the countries with the least technology to combat climate change increases with every report. The UN panel projects that in just the next 12 years, a more arid Africa could see 75 million to 250 million people facing increased water stress. Crop yields of rain-dependent crops could fall in some nations by half, and revenues could fall by as much as 90 percent over this century. Some forecasters worry about human migrations - refugees fleeing the effects not of war, but of a warming climate. For those who care about safaris, 25 to 40 percent of animal species in sub-Saharan national parks could become endangered.
In Asia, megadelta regions that already flood frequently are projected to suffer even more because of a rising sea level and excess of rain. "The global burden of climate-change-attributable diarrhea and malnutrition are already the largest in the world in Southeastern Asian countries, including Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Myanmar, and Nepal," one UN report said. "Illness and death are expected to increase from diarrheal diseases due to drought and flooding and are also expected from increased amounts of cholera bacteria in coastal waters."
Yet, the United States, not content with ignoring global warming as a concept, is gutting the tools to help us assist nations that as of now do not have the capital to wall off the rising waters or deal with droughts. In testimony last month before a Senate committee, Kevin Trenberth, the head of the climate analysis section of NCAR, warned that Earth "could become a different planet by 2100." He said, "rather than slowing down, the problem is accelerating. . . . There is a crisis of inaction in addressing and preparing for climate change."
By starving federal funding of sound science - to the point where NCAR has to stop measuring the effects of climate change on the people most likely to bear its worst effects - the Bush administration's conduct easily qualifies as negligence.
Welcome
