Billions Face Risks From Climate Change

gollum123 writes with a link to a kind of grim BBC story. According to a report drawn up by 'hundreds of international environmental experts', billions of people face drought and famine, as well as an increase in natural disasters, as a result of climate change. Individuals in the poorest countries face the most danger, due to a lack of infrastructure and geographic location. "The scientific work reviewed by IPCC scientists includes more than 29,000 pieces of data on observed changes in physical and biological aspects of the natural world. Eighty-nine percent of these, it believes, are consistent with a warming world. Several delegations, including the US, Saudi Arabia, China and India, had asked for the final version to reflect less certainty than the draft."

Comments

Re:Bitch slap

[isotope23]

Negative Ghostrider...

unless you think humans are to blame for warming mars as well?

I will grant you that human activity may be causing some of the warming trend. However I think the majority is due to the natural cycle of the sun. That said we as a species have done some really stupid things, i.e. locating all our major cities along the coasts, rampant overpopulation and the removal of population limiting factors (such as malaria etc) without taking into account what the results of these actions would be : less mortality -> population explosion -> mass starvation.

Whether we like to admit it or not, a large part of this problem is the carrying capacity of the earth. With no (or few) natural balancing factors to keep our species in check we will wreck the environment regardless. IMO chances are we will end up limiting ourselves (i.e. war of the thermonuclear variety) when the resource problem becomes acute.