Global Tidal Waves
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, an international group of scientists, says that by 2080 as many as 3.2 billion people ─ one-third of the planet’s population ─ will be short of water, up to 600 million will be short of food and as many as 7 million will face coastal flooding.
Security experts fear that the tidal wave of forced migration will not only fuel existing conflicts but create new ones in some of the poorest and most deprived areas of the world. “A world of many more Darfurs is the increasingly likely nightmare scenario,” claims the report.
Since 1965, a volume of water equivalent to the Great Lakes has melted in polar regions and flowed into the world’s oceans, making them less salty. China is at risk from global warming as the Tibetan glaciers that feed and regulate many of China’s rivers begin to melt, and the country’s agriculture becomes vulnerable to even small changes in temperature. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has projected that sea levels will rise up about 0.91 meters by 2100.
The U.N. estimates that by 2025, two-thirds of the world’s people will be living with water stress, with North Africa, the Middle East and West Asia hit the worst. Regions that get more rainfall may get it in the form of fierce rainstorms that cause flash floods rather than a useful drizzle that soaks into the ground.
People who live within 97 kilometers of a shoreline, or about one-third of the world’s population, could be affected if sea levels rise as expected over the coming decades, possibly more than 1 meter by 2100. Flooded homes and crops could make environmental refugees of a billion people. Living on a bay that floods my street whenever there is a direct typhoon hit that brings with it high tides and ferocious winds that turn the street into a kayaking paradise beach for the neighborhood kids as the winds subside, I have personally experienced the growing peril on a small scale personally and am naturally very concerned.
“The culprit responsible for warming has been identified. As far as I am concerned, the debate’s over. What we need to be debating is what we’re going to do about it,” said Tim Barnett, an oceanographer at the Scripps Oceanographic Institution in San Diego. The Pentagon agrees.
A study commissioned and suppressed in 2005 by the Pentagon warns that major European cities will sink beneath rising seas and Britain will be plunged into a “Siberian” climate by 2020. Nuclear conflict, mega-droughts, famine and widespread rioting will erupt across the world. This threat to global stability vastly eclipses that of terrorism, say the few experts privy to the report. “Disruption and conflict will be endemic features of life,” concludes the Pentagon analysis. “Once again, warfare would define human life.”
The major threat of mayhem comes from large populations simply upping the stakes and moving into other people’s territories. I don’t know which way global warming will run, but won’t it be interesting if the zones that suffer most are Europe and North America and the ones that remain or indeed become more habitable are in Africa and the southerly Asian lands. Colonialist imperialists on the move again ─ firing as they go.
Security experts fear that the tidal wave of forced migration will not only fuel existing conflicts but create new ones in some of the poorest and most deprived areas of the world. “A world of many more Darfurs is the increasingly likely nightmare scenario,” claims the report.
Since 1965, a volume of water equivalent to the Great Lakes has melted in polar regions and flowed into the world’s oceans, making them less salty. China is at risk from global warming as the Tibetan glaciers that feed and regulate many of China’s rivers begin to melt, and the country’s agriculture becomes vulnerable to even small changes in temperature. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has projected that sea levels will rise up about 0.91 meters by 2100.
The U.N. estimates that by 2025, two-thirds of the world’s people will be living with water stress, with North Africa, the Middle East and West Asia hit the worst. Regions that get more rainfall may get it in the form of fierce rainstorms that cause flash floods rather than a useful drizzle that soaks into the ground.
People who live within 97 kilometers of a shoreline, or about one-third of the world’s population, could be affected if sea levels rise as expected over the coming decades, possibly more than 1 meter by 2100. Flooded homes and crops could make environmental refugees of a billion people. Living on a bay that floods my street whenever there is a direct typhoon hit that brings with it high tides and ferocious winds that turn the street into a kayaking paradise beach for the neighborhood kids as the winds subside, I have personally experienced the growing peril on a small scale personally and am naturally very concerned.
“The culprit responsible for warming has been identified. As far as I am concerned, the debate’s over. What we need to be debating is what we’re going to do about it,” said Tim Barnett, an oceanographer at the Scripps Oceanographic Institution in San Diego. The Pentagon agrees.
A study commissioned and suppressed in 2005 by the Pentagon warns that major European cities will sink beneath rising seas and Britain will be plunged into a “Siberian” climate by 2020. Nuclear conflict, mega-droughts, famine and widespread rioting will erupt across the world. This threat to global stability vastly eclipses that of terrorism, say the few experts privy to the report. “Disruption and conflict will be endemic features of life,” concludes the Pentagon analysis. “Once again, warfare would define human life.”
The major threat of mayhem comes from large populations simply upping the stakes and moving into other people’s territories. I don’t know which way global warming will run, but won’t it be interesting if the zones that suffer most are Europe and North America and the ones that remain or indeed become more habitable are in Africa and the southerly Asian lands. Colonialist imperialists on the move again ─ firing as they go.
posted by Peter de Krassel's Custom Maid Politics at 7:52 PM
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