My previous post focused on less dramatic consequences of climate change including the medical implications of raising temperatures on the human body. This post is about more frightening implications of climate change, some are immediate and some in the near future. High levels of greenhouse gasses pumped into the atmosphere by the Industrial Revolution and human population growth have already triggered destructive environmental changes that scientists believe are not reversible.
This week, over a thousand people have already been reported dead in Pakistan and millions are displaced. After three months of seasonal Monsoon rains that are the worst in recent history large regions of Pakistan are flooded and much of the country’s farmland is underwater. This nation of over 200 million people faces intense food shortages and potential famine without a massive global aid response.
The floods have also caused major infrastructure damage. Thousands of miles of roads were washed away with at least 162 bridges destroyed. With sanitation facilities destroyed, the Pakistani medical emergency group Red Crescent is now preparing for a wave of water-borne diseases.
Pakistan is one of the world’s poorer countries with a relatively light carbon footprint is also one of the world’s most vulnerable to extreme weather events. Last spring it was hit by record-breaking, drought-intensifying heat that scientists concluded was thirty times as likely to occur because of global warming. The prolonged drought and the devastating rains are probably the result of changing wind patterns and ocean currents as water in the Indian Ocean is warmed by climate change. Pakistan’s neighbor, India, also suffered through the prolonged drought cutting into its agricultural production and causes sharp cuts in food exports so it will not be in a position to address food shortages there.
This week is the United Nations’ Africa Climate Week. At a major international gathering in the West African nation of Gabon participants tried to develop plans to address the erupting climate emergency on that continent. In the Sahel region just south of the Sahara Desert, water availability has dropped more than 40 percent over the last two decades and there are currently severe droughts in Ethiopia, Somalia, and parts of Kenya that threaten famine in the region. 80 million people in Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan and Uganda now face food insecurity. Last spring, South Africa’s KwaZulu-Natal province had the worst flooding in recent history. This region of South Africa, like Pakistan, is impacted by changes in Indian Ocean currents and wind patterns. In West Africa, potentially lethal heat days are expected to increase to between 100 and 250 days a year preventing people from working outdoors and impacting on food supplies. Historically, Africa has contributed the least of any region in the world to climate change and is currently responsible for only four percent of global greenhouse emissions. The World Banks estimates that as extreme weather events and climate change continue to impact on Africa, over 100 million people will become climate refugees by 2050. They will be knocking on the doors of Western Europe and North America, including the United States.
Africa seems far away and Pakistan is on the other side of the global, almost 7,500 miles from Washington DC. The devastation in these regions caused by climate change hardly seems to affect Americans, but climate refugees from Africa and South Asia are already knocking on the doors of Western Europe and North America, including the United States.
Meanwhile in the United States, escalating fuel costs will probably soar even higher as fossil fuel companies including Sunoco, ExxonMobil, and Shell are sued by local governments for causing climate related environmental damage and insurance companies are trying to limit their liability by refusing to cover legal fees incurred by the fossil fuel companies. Local school taxes are also expected the skyrocket as school districts are forced to air-condition older buildings to avoid school shutdowns on extreme heat days. An Ohio study reported that the state’s largest cities will need to spend between $40 and $200 million on new air conditioning in schools and predicted that climate change would cost local governments as much as $6 billion annually by 2050.
The long-term scenario for the United States and much of the world is starting to look much worse. A recently released study of the Greenland ice cap, along with Antarctica, it holds much of the Earth’s water supply, suggests that ice melt from “zombie glaciers,” glaciers that are irreparable even if fossil fuel emissions are sharply reduced, will raise ocean levels by at least ten inches and perhaps as high as thirty inches sometime during the 21st century. Aqua-filters will become salinated, agricultural lands will become barren because of saltwater, and billions of people living in coastal regions will be forced to relocate as some of the world’s largest cities are destroyed. The cold fresh water could potentially cause abrupt shifts in Atlantic Ocean currents that moderate weather in Western Europe and make it habitable. These projections are based on a gradual but steady increase in global temperature, but the reality is that the Arctic is warming even faster than previously described. Over the last forty years, the Arctic region heated up four times faster than the global average and in some localities it warmed seven times faster.
A six-year-old United Nations study identified salt-degraded land in Central Asia, the Yellow River Basin in China, the Indo-Gangetic Basin in India, Pakistan’s Indus Basin, the Euphrates Basin in Syria and Iraq, the Murray-Darling Basin in Australia and the San Joaquin Valley in California. In North Carolina and Florida previously productive coastal lands are already ruined.
According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), a one foot rise in sea-level would threaten New Orleans; with a two foot rise much of Galveston, Texas would be under water; a three foot rise would permanently cover Miami Beach; and a four foot rise would flood Lower Manhattan.
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