We have entered the age of consequences from climate change due to humanity’s insatiable thirst for abundant and cheap fossil fuel energy. For thousands of years, our stable climate has been the result of a balanced carbon cycle that has allowed our civilization to become what we know today. Carbon sinks such as the oceans, forests and grasslands have balanced emissions from every source over the millennia. But that has changed since the industrial revolution because human caused greenhouse gas emissions are no longer being fully absorbed anymore. Co2 continues to compound and accumulate day after day after day. The level of Co2 has gone from
208 ppm to
406 ppm challenging the limits that most life needs to survive. The climate never received the memo to stop it’s accelerating rate of Co2, and it will continue to accelerate long after the 2100 year milestone that most people are familiar with is reached. Nowhere are these life threatening consequences more evident than in the developing world.
South Asia, a region of deep poverty where one-fifth of the world’s people live are suffering the consequences of climate change right now. International Water Management Institute’s (IWMI) research found that 750 million people in S Asia (or 10% of the global population) “were affected by floods, droughts, extreme rainfall, heat waves and sea-level rise (SLR) — all impacts of climate change or worsened by it — in the first decade of this millennium”.
India Climate Dialogue reports:
The study used data on the spatial distribution of various climate related hazards in 1,398 sub-national areas of Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. An analysis of country-level population exposure showed that approximately 750 million people are affected by combined climate hazards.
Of the affected population, 72% is in India, followed by 12% each in Bangladesh and Pakistan. The remaining 4% are spread across Bhutan, Nepal and Sri Lanka.
Droughts are recurrent in South Asia, and their impacts on agriculture are enormous. In 2002-03, South Asia faced one of its worst droughts. In India alone, a drought has been reported at least once in every three years in the last five decades. The country incurred financial losses of about USD 149 billion and approximately 350 million people were affected due to droughts in the past 10 years.
An increase in the frequency and severity of heat waves can lead to crop failure, increased livestock mortality, increased human illnesses and deaths, and power outages.
Exposure to sea-level rise was the highest in the states of West Bengal, Odisha and Maharashtra in India, followed by Bangladesh, Sindh in Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. Low-lying coastal cities particularly vulnerable to the risks of storm surges and sea level rise include Karachi, Mumbai, Chennai and Dhaka.
These cities are likely to become more vulnerable to flooding in future because high seawater levels provide a higher base from which storm surges advance. Higher seawater levels will also potentially increase the risk of flooding due to rainstorms, by reducing coastal drainage, because sea-level rise also raises the local water table.
The Asian Development Bank said in a recently released report that Climate Change will be “disastrous for Asia”.
"Unabated climate change threatens to undo many of the development advancements of the last decades, not least by incurring high economic losses," the report from the Manila-based bank said.
By the end of the century, parts of the continent could see mean temperatures shoot up to eight degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, as the global mean temperature rises by half that, it added.
"A business-as-usual scenario will lead to disastrous climate impacts for the people of Asia and the Pacific, especially for poor and vulnerable populations," it said.
Emphasis mine — 8 degrees Celsius is roughly 14.4 degrees Fahrenheit.
While a 2 degrees Celsius rise will be difficult to manage, "one can assume that a 4 degrees Celsius increase would lead to humanitarian disasters in many nations and result in unmanageable migration flows or locked-in populations", the report said.
Asia as a whole would see sea levels rise by 1.4 metres (4.6 feet) within this century, nearly twice the projected increase under the Paris deal, and face more destructive cyclones, it said.
In this scenario, the report said the region's coral reef systems would collapse from mass bleaching, with severe consequences for fisheries and tourism.
Melting Asian glaciers would cause both floods and water shortages, disrupting agriculture, and increase dependence on rainfall to meet water needs.
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In the Indian subcontinent, there has been an increase of fatalities as populations of humans, starving elephants and tigers collide over food and water.
The Sunderbans are steadily losing its mangroves. Mangroves not only are nurseries for marine life but they also protect coastal areas from lethal storm surge. Sea level rise is considered the driving factor for coastal erosion, coastal flooding, and an increase in the number of tidal creeks.
For the poor and those that work outside climate change has turned dehydration into a deadly kidney disease.
In Bangladesh, recent floods caused the destruction of over 700,000 tons of rice.
Climate change has also caused an increase in the rate of suicides throughout India including the Indo-Gangetic Plain.
Whenever a day’s temperature is above 68 degrees fahrenheit and sees an increase of 1.8 degrees fahrenheit (one degree celsius), India records about 65 suicides in a single day. Heat leads to harvest loss, which can then increase food prices, less jobs and a hole in household savings. When that happens, a large number of people in India, mostly male heads of household, commit suicide.
“Each life claimed by suicide is devastating,” Tamma Carleton, the UC Berkeley researcher who conducted the study, told International Business Times. “It was both shocking and heartbreaking to see that thousands of people face such bleak conditions that they are driven to harm themselves.”
More than 75 percent of worldwide suicides occur in developing nations, with India taking one-fifth of the incidents. Suicide numbers have increased overall in India, where more than 130,000 take their own lives each year. Suicide rates have doubled since 1980 in the country. The study suggests seven percent of the increase is linked to climate change.
The findings shows climate change is already affecting humans, and it will continue to change as temperatures rise. Carleton predicts the numbers will increase as the planet gets warmer.