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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."
"sea levels in their state have risen three times the rate of rise on the rest of the Atlantic coast [sciencedaily.com]."
What the quoted article actually says:
ScienceDaily (Oct. 29, 2009) — An international team of environmental scientists led by the University of Pennsylvania has shown that sea-level rise, at least in North Carolina, is accelerating. Researchers found 20th-century sea-level rise to be three times higher than the rate of sea-level rise during the last 500 years. In addition, this jump appears to occur between 1879 and 1915, a time of industrial change that may provide a direct link to human-induced climate change.
It seems more than a little illogical to state that sea levels rise higher in one Atlantic coast state than the others. And the primary sea level rise occurred well before the evil auto culture. But then I'm just an ignoramus according to the above post.
... but here in Vietnam we DO hear quite a bit about the rapid encroachment (and salinization) by the ocean into the Mekong delta. It is clear that with the ocean coming in (I seem to remember an encroachment figure of 1.4km/yr.) and that hundreds of thousands have already been displaced because they can no longer farm there. (This has driven the growth of the big cities which is where I live). The government is constantly projecting that millions more will move in the next few decades (This is from their Thanh Nhien News which is a pretty widely read paper, there's an English website you can visit).
Of course matters will soon be made even worse as upstream countries start damming the Mekong. (They may be doing so because the freshwater source in the Himalayas is losing its snowpack cover. This may also be due to climate change.)
Vietnam is supposedly one of the most susceptible countries to sea level rising but I can imagine things could be even worse in an even poorer (and closer to sea level) country like Bangladesh.
This is like the livestock's long shadow mess they did a while back. They claimed that raising meat is responsible for more global warming than transportation (e.g., cars). This became widely quoted and used as an excuse by the vegan crowd for trying to force every to stop eating meat. The problem was the report was full of errors and in general a fraud. It didn't include the full costs of transportation yet it over included the costs for livestock resulting in totally distorted numbers. More importantly it didn't differentiate between the grain fed confinement animal feeding operations vs the pastured farming of livestock which are two entirely different things. All animal farming got painted with the same broad brush. Additionally, they completely failed to mention that the growing of vegetable and grain crops for humans has the exact same problem and that it takes several pounds of veggies/cereals to equal one pound of nutrients of meat. Finally the FAO did retract their report but they didn't make a big deal about the retraction like they had when they published it and the vegan crowd continues to use the flawed original report as justification for their eco/political terrorism. The UN, FAO, etc are very irresponsible with their reports and press releases.
To really understand this, you have to look at the claim. Let's look at what the UN actually said:
there are now about 19.2 million people officially recognized as "persons of concern"-that is, people likely to be displaced because of environmental disasters. This figure is predicted to grow to about 50 million by the end of the year 2010.
Note that the number is not environmental refugees, but actually persons of concern. There is a huge difference between the two, and the second is probably not inaccurate.
Now, on the website in question, UNEP said this
Fifty million climate refugees by 2010
This is obviously not what the original researchers were claiming. Who knows why UNEP put that on their website, but it is most likely an error of their PR agency, not of their science. In short, the scientists were probably right, but the propagandaists were wrong.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Can someone provide some links regarding those organizations? ... that is a complete nonsense claim. (Considering that we don't even know by what ice ages are caused ...)
I learned 1975 that we likely run into a global warming, and I never heard about anyone proclaiming an approaching ice age. After all the next ice age is due in 35k years and not in the next 100
angel'o'sphere
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Well, the news says it is the worst weather (and the highest count of tornados) since 50 years.
If it bleeds it leads. This is sensationalist news, nothing more, nothing less. And highest count in 50 years? Well in the US they only have about 50 years worth of tornado tracking that's considered reliable in most places, and some of those are only reliable to 1970, but tornado numbers have been far higher. Hell where I live the 'accurate temperature and tornado count' is only goes back to about 1973.
Om, nomnomnom...
Here's a fact you might or might not like.
Science changes.
[...]
That's why serious scientists should be leery of predicting things they do not have a good bead on far into the future. But then, Climate studies have been hijacked by politics. Call me back when the models explain the Maunder minimum.
P.S.: no, the right answer is not that my shaving foam causes sunspots to become rare.
"If a boss demands loyalty, give him integrity. But if he demands integrity, give him loyalty." (John Boyd, 1927-1997)
I'd say you are an order of magnitude off of "paradise" - we need to get to around 250 million if we want "sustainable".
Even trying to cut the population in half (more than half, really) would require nearly preventing all births for 10-20 years. Sure, it is possible but it is entirely possible that you would wreck the motivation people have for having children completely. If you push too hard on this there is the possiblity that people will just give up.
This is a factor that some of the more radical environmentalists refuse to accept - that if you push hard enough the result will be that people will just give up entirely. All it takes is about 15 years of zero birthrate and you're not going to get it back, ever. Absolutely it is hard to disincent the drive to reproduce - but if you succeed the result could be catastrophic.
How hard would you have to push? Well, in the US and Western Europe today the population growth is negative. Many people feel that it isn't fair to bring children into a world of declining expectations and looming destruction of the environment. Mostly this is among educated young people. In the US we are left with immigration as the only population growth factor there is and I suspect Western Europe is pretty much the same way. This portends some very drastic changes in the coming decades as the population shifts away from educated European-extracted peoples and towards Latin American folks that have been subsistance farming for generations and no goals higher than survival. In most inner cities today the idea of the straight-A student is a subject of ridicule, as is the idea of going to college - what, do you want to be seen as trying to prove yourself better than your peers?