At a time when the Foley scandal and the mid-term elections are (rightly) dominating the media and public discourse, I'd like to make this reminder of a serious long term issue that drives us to vote Democrat. Getting the Democrats into office to stop the global warming denial and corporate control of government is a most important short-term goal. And seeing a vision of the future if we continue with Republican control helps motivate us. Global Warming will be the most destructive long term threat to our nation and all of humankind if no action is taken.
Continued south of the equator.
It's in this context that the Independent is reporting on a new study issued by the Met Office's Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research. The study reports that
one third of the earth could be a desert by 2100. Apparently, formerly agriculturally productive areas will be hit with drought so severe that cultivation will be impossible. The study isn't yet available on the Met Office website, but the Independent has the story.
Drought threatening the lives of millions will spread across half the land surface of the Earth in the coming century because of global warming, according to new predictions from Britain's leading climate scientists.
Extreme drought, in which agriculture is in effect impossible, will affect about a third of the planet, according to the study from the Met Office's Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research.
Of course weather never changes in a smooth progression. Cyclical, seasonal, and even daily extremes will occur much earlier than that, and we're already getting a taste of what is to come, with severe droughts occurring presently in the Amazon basin, Africa, and even the Midwest of the US. Drought affects the very basics of life. Without water there is no food. Without water there is no life.
The findings, released at the Climate Clinic at the Conservative Party conference in Bournemouth, drew astonished and dismayed reactions from aid agencies and development specialists, who fear that the poor of developing countries will be worst hit.
"This is genuinely terrifying," said Andrew Pendleton of Christian Aid. "It is a death sentence for many millions of people. It will mean migration off the land at levels we have not seen before, and at levels poor countries cannot cope with."
I think that he underestimates a bit when he says that millions die. Millions died in the relatively short-term drought in Ethiopia in the eighties. Millions died in North Korea during the three-year famine there in the 90s. These were times where the rest of the world had robust economies and few issues of their own to deal with so some help was given mitigating the loss of life. Imagine this on a global scale and lasting decades. The industrialized world will be dealing with these same issues. They will be unable to offer help to struggling third world nations, assuming they are not reduced to third world status themselves. Billions could die.
Almost no one lives in the Sahara desert. Now imagine almost every country and region between the tropic of Cancer and the tropic of Capricorn has a similar climate. What will happen to all of those people? Will they try to flee their ever hotter and drier countries? Which countries will take in hundreds of millions of refugees? How will they even cross the oceans, deserts, and mountains to arrive at their destinations?
And the results of this study actually underestimate the effect:
Their impact is likely to even greater because the findings may be an underestimate. The study did not include potential effects on drought from global-warming-induced changes to the Earth's carbon cycle.
In one unpublished Met Office study, when the carbon cycle effects are included, future drought is even worse.
Our children's and children's children's future depends upon us taking action to get greenhouse gas emissions under control now.
See article here.