Here is an article on global warming that was on NZ Xtramsn a couple of months ago. The scenario it predicts is beyond frightening, and what is most disturbing about it all, to me, is that we know that we, not God, will be to blame...
Grim Climate Change Scenario for Asia
The weather predictions for Asia in 2050 read like a script from a
doomsday movie.
Except many climatologists and green groups fear they will come true
unless there is a concerted global effort to rein in greenhouse gas
emissions.
In the decades to come Asia, home to more than half the world's 6.3
billion people, will lurch from one climate extreme to another, with
impoverished farmers battling droughts, floods, disease, food
shortages and rising sea levels.
"It's not a pretty picture," said Steve Sawyer, climate policy
adviser with Greenpeace in Amsterdam. Global warming and changes to
weather patterns are already occurring and there is enough excess
carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere to drive
climate change for decades to come.
Already, changes are being felt in Asia but worse is likely to come,
Sawyer and top climate bodies say, and could lead to mass migration
and widespread humanitarian crises.
According to predictions, glaciers will melt faster, some Pacific
and Indian Ocean islands will have to evacuate or build sea
defences, storms will become more intense and insect and water-borne
diseases will move into new areas as the world warms.
All this comes on top of rising populations and spiralling demand
for food, water and other resources. Experts say environmental
degradation such as deforestation and pollution will likely magnify
the impacts of climate change.
In what could be a foretaste of the future, Japan was hit by a
record 10 typhoons and tropical storms this year, while two-thirds
of Bangladesh, parts of Nepal and large areas of north-eastern India
were flooded, affecting 50 million people, destroying livelihoods
and making tens of thousands ill.
The year before, a winter cold snap and a summer heat wave killed
more than 2,000 people in India.
India At Risk
Sawyer said India, with a population of just over one billion
people, is one of the areas most threatened by climate change.
"The threat to the agricultural base for the Indian subcontinent
from drought and increased heat waves, the consequences to the
burgeoning Indian economy and the very large number of people to
feed are potentially very very substantial."
Rising sea levels will also bring misery to millions in Asia, he
said, causing sea water to inundate fertile rice-growing areas and
fresh-water aquifers, making some areas uninhabitable.
Sawyer said India and Bangladesh will have to draw up permanent
relocation plans for millions of people. "I'm afraid that's almost
inevitable."
By 2050, China will have built sea defences along part of its low-
lying, storm-prone south-eastern coast, while the north of the
country faced increasing desertification, he said.
According to the UN's World Food Programme, the Gobi Desert in China
expanded by 52,400 square kilometres between 1994 and 1999, creeping
closer to the capital Beijing.
Anwar Ali, a leading climatologist in Bangladesh, says about 15
percent of the country would be under water if sea levels rose by a
metre in the next century.
Perhaps the biggest threat to Asia in the future will be the
shortage of clean water. The WFP says Asia accounts for 60 percent
of the world's population but has only 36 percent of the globe's
fresh water.
According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC),
rapid melting of glaciers poses a major threat to the Indian
Subcontinent, Southeast Asia and parts of China.
Seven major rivers, including the Ganges, Indus, Brahmaputra and the
Mekong, begin in the Himalayas and the glacial melt water during
summer months is crucial to the livelihoods of hundreds of millions
of people downstream.
Rich Versus Poor
But many of these glaciers are melting quickly and will be unable to
act as reservoirs that moderate river flows. This means less water
in the dry season and the chance for more extreme floods during the
wet season.
Sawyer thinks rich countries, by far the biggest polluters, should
look after the millions at risk from climate change or suffer the
consequences that could include mass migration or trying to feed
millions made homeless by droughts and floods in a world struggling
to grow enough food.
Fears of mass migration have already prompted the Pentagon and the
Canadian Security Intelligence Service, among others, to study the
risk from climate-induced mass migration.
The Pentagon in its 2003 report looked at what might happen if the
climate changed abruptly. The result was near anarchy.
"As global and local carrying capacities are reduced, tensions could
mount around the world," it said. This could lead some wealthier
nations becoming virtual fortresses to preserve their resources.
"Less fortunate nations, especially those with ancient enmities with
their neighbours, may initiate struggles for access to food, clean
water, or energy," the report said.
Few places are more exposed to climate change than the low-lying
Maldives islands, to the west of Sri Lanka, where the highest
natural point is under 2.5 metres.
"We still face the threat of sea level rise," Maldivian President
Maumoon Abdul Gayoom said in a recent interview.
"There is encroachment of the sea on many islands, there is erosion
of our beaches," he said. In response, the Maldives is building an
island that is a metre higher than the capital Male.
Malcolm Duthie, WFP's country director in Laos, said even small
changes in weather patterns, such as a delay in the monsoon of just
a few weeks, is a threat to subsistence farmers. In Laos, he said
rains seemed to have become shorter and sharper, meaning faster run-
off and more erosion.
Such changes are also threatening millions of farmers in Indonesia,
where rapid industrialisation, slash-and-burn land clearing and
illegal logging have caused extreme weather and pollution across the
archipelago, experts say.
"The wet season is shorter than usual which has led to higher
rainfall during that brief period and sometimes caused landslides
and floods," said Indonesian weather expert Agus Paulus.
Government officials have said in the past years water levels at a
number of reservoirs in densely populated Java island are close to a
critically low level.
As countries try to adapt, it will be the poor who suffer most from
climate change, said IPCC chairman RK Pachauri in the report "Up in
smoke?" released last month.
"The impacts of climate change will fall disproportionately upon
developing countries and the poor persons within all countries," he
said, meaning the lot of millions of peasants could become far worse
than it is now.
