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What Happened To the Climate Refugees?
Attila Dimedici writes "In 2005 the UN said that by 2010 there would be 50 million climate refugees. They even provided a map of where they would come from. However since that original story was posted the UN has taken down that page. They apparently don't know about Google cache."
This article clearly demonstrates what's wrong with America's science reporting. If the UN had released a report claiming 50 million global warming refugees by 2010, there would be dozens of news articles on it. The supposed incriminating evidence is a Google Cache page with this map that doesn't itself say anything about refugees, but does highlight areas most susceptible to sea level rise. The "50 million climate refugees by 2010" statement is not referenced anywhere in any UN report, it's a six words on one defunct graphic that was part of a larger report on world agriculture by the UN University. This 50 million by 2010 figure comes from Dr. Bogardi at the UN University in Bonn, NOT the United Nations.
The problem with this prediction being made by any scientist is that keeping track of how many refugees there are is difficult (current estimate by the UN is 1 million a year, a figure that the Red Cross lends support to with the statement that environmental disasters are displacing more people than war now) and the causes are debatable. The epic flooding in Pakistan created 10 million refugees, Hurricane Katrina added a quarter of a million refugees, and desertification in Africa is displacing millions. Can we blame these events on Global Warming? Hurricanes and floods happen without a warming world, but a warming world increases the chances of such disasters happening.
Then there are the refugees that no one realizes. In the small coastal town where I live in North Carolina, houses have been falling into the swamp one by one for decades, but the residents blame it on people building their homes in flood zones, not realizing that sea levels in their state have risen three times the rate of rise on the rest of the Atlantic coast. People didn't build their homes in the water, the water rose 1.5 meters over the 50 years since they were built, but nobody realizes this because of landscape amnesia.
You can read all about the various estimates concerning environmental refugees on Wikipedia. It took the author of this untruth less than an hour to post their nonsense and the deniers flooded the Internet with it quickly. It took me two hours to research and write this response, because I wanted to know what I was talking about, and I will only reach a very small audience in comparison. This is why I despair when considering how science could possibly stand a chance against the overwhelming confidence ignorance brings the unscientific masses.
i ~ Celebrating Science, Cyberspace, Speculation
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The author of that propaganda piece is a known shill of whatever industry pays him.
Here's a video that he tried to take down unsuccessfully.
Er... RIGHT side of the graph?
Take another look. Particularly at the x axis.
I would like to know why the UN said this in the first place
Is there any evidence that the UN made this prediction at all?
From TFA to the original paper there is a huge difference. For instance, TFA cites population growth in islands like Bahamas, St. Lucia, and Seychelles, which were never mentioned in the paper.
What Dr. Myers actually said is that there were 25 million refugees in 1995 fleeing disasters caused by desertification and global warming and that number could double in ten years. This seems a perfectly reasonable claim, if one wants to discuss it the best way would be to get hold of Dr. Myers method for counting refugees and defining which ones are "environmental" and see if that prediction became true.
Now, instead of doing this, TFA says the UN has "removed" a page that they, so much smarter than the UN that they are, recovered from Google cache. Then they invent a lot of false data, but they never realized that the actual paper is readily found by googling so their lies are easily debunked.
With so many people posting their own version of facts, it helps knowing the past history of such people, so that you can disregard their claims. What made me google for this Anthony Watts was the claims he made that the UN had predicted 50 million refugees coming from Bahamas (population 330000), St. Lucia (population 173765), and Seychelles (population 84000).
With numbers like these, something looks wrong. So I googled for the original study to find out what it said. it was no surprise that neither Bahamas, Seychelles, or St. Lucia were mentioned there.
What it says is that there are million of refugees coming from regions affected by desertification and that number is increasing.
And you know what's the funny thing about all this? If you take the trouble to actually read the paper Dr. Norman Myers wrote, you will notice that he does not mention global warming at all. What he calls "environmental refugees" are, in his own words, "people who can no longer gain a secure livelihood in their homelands because of drought, soil erosion, desertification, deforestation and other environmental problems, together with associated problems of population pressures and profound poverty. In their desperation, these people feel they have no alternative but to seek sanctuary elsewhere, however hazardous the attempt."
In their haste to deny global warming, people like Anthony Watts do not even try to find out who they should write against...
Believe it or not, atmospheric scientists and oceanographers know about heat capacity and thermodynamics.
Observations of ocean temperatures show:
1. The upper layers of the ocean have warmed.
2. The warming is top-down, not bottom-up (contrary to the implication in your link that the atmosphere has warmed due to the oceans).
3. The amount of ocean warming is entirely consistent with the heat flux attributable to atmospheric warming.
4. The observed ocean warming is able to explain much of the observed sea level rise (due to thermosteric expansion), with glaciers explaining most of the rest.
In short, yes, the oceans have a much larger heat capacity than the atmosphere. No, this doesn't mean that the atmosphere is unable to influence ocean temperature or sea level.
The only evidence is that we're still exiting a glacial period, and have no clue how the environment works. We've only scratched the surface of our understanding of how the interlocking segments of the entire climate move together.
As for keeping it civil? Better let the warmists know, their new civility is 'attack'.
Om, nomnomnom...
The facts aren't contrary. This was a completely valid prediction. The election of Barack Obama prevented this.
"This was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal." -- Barack Obama, 3 June 2008, upon winning his party nomination.
Uh no. What Obama really said was:
Because if we are willing to work for it, and fight for it, and believe in it, then I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best hope on earth.
You only quoted part of the sentence, you left out the modifier that changed it from ridiculous to reasonable. Why do you Obama haters do that? What's the point? How can you think lying about him is a legitimate tactic when in practically the same breath you accuse climatologists of lying about global warming to advance some sort of twisted agenda?
What it says to me is that you are just another tribalist - the kind of person who is likely to say "My country, right or wrong!" because you aren't intellectually honest enough to realize that the full quotation continues with "If right to be kept right, if wrong to be set right."