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Climate-Exodus Expected In The Middle East And North Africa (phys.org)

Posted by BeauHD on from the worldwide-support dept.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Phys.Org: Researchers of the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry and the Cyprus Institute in Nicosia have calculated that the Middle East and North Africa could become so hot that human habitability is compromised. The goal of limiting global warming to less than two degrees Celsius, agreed at the recent UN climate summit in Paris, will not be sufficient to prevent this scenario. The result is deeply alarming: Even if Earth's temperature were to increase on average only by two degrees Celsius compared to pre-industrial times, the temperature in summer in these regions will increase more than twofold. This means that during hot days temperatures south of the Mediterranean will reach around 46 degrees Celsius (approximately 114 degrees Fahrenheit) by mid-century. Such extremely hot days will occur five times more often than was the case at the turn of the millennium. In combination with increasing air pollution by windblown desert dust, the environmental conditions could become intolerable and may force people to migrate.

42 of 240 comments (clear)

  1. That's one way to convince the deniers by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Tell them that if we don't take action soon, more Muslims will move to their neighborhood.

    1. Re:That's one way to convince the deniers by NotInHere · · Score: 2

      I don't think republicans or anybody else will really care. If there are 1 billion people who want to move into your country with a few hundred million people, you always will have to say "no", even if they all were evangelicals or had other kinds of religions the republicans *would* like. The sheer number of it will just drown this religion argument, or any other argument. It will just be about bikeshedding issues about how to keep them all out of the place. Like whether to put automatically shooting devices at the border line or whether to man it with guards.

    2. Re:That's one way to convince the deniers by MightyMartian · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The history of mass migrations suggest that even powerful states can be overwhelmed. Rome, Byzantium, Medieval Islamic civilization and China were all unable to prevent massive amounts of migrant peoples, and where the states weren't outright wiped out, they were heavily damaged.

      Europe can't even cope with migrants from Syria and North Africa as they are. Now imagine what it would take to prevent many times more than that trying to get into Europe. Could Turkey hold them back? If Turkey fails, could the Balkan states prevent millions of people? And what about the Mediterranean, will the British Royal Navy start laying mines and sinking any boat that tries to get across?

      The ramifications of massive migrations out of the Middle East and North Africa for Europe are enormous, and judging by the reactions to current migrations, I think we can see how destabilising and dangerous they will be.

      --
      The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
    3. Re:That's one way to convince the deniers by dwywit · · Score: 4, Informative

      You're being selective. The plagues during the first half of the second millennium were estimated to have killed killed from 30% to 60% of the population of Europe+Asia. You're making it sound like it killed 90% - that was the death rate from people who caught it. The rest of the population either a. weren't exposed, or b. resistant.

      --
      They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom
    4. Re:That's one way to convince the deniers by SuperKendall · · Score: 2

      And you are acting like an outright lie doesn't color the rest of the message entirely. Which it does.

      Try not lying so blatantly the next time you are trying to scare people into conformance with your religion.

      --
      "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
    5. Re:That's one way to convince the deniers by swb · · Score: 2

      Rome in particular is a questionable example of that logic.

      First of all, was it even migration necessarily? Roman citizenship used to be limited to classes of people who actually came from the city itself. As time passed, the class of people who could be citizens and further regions of the empire were granted citizenship.

      Many of the "migrants" who moved to Rome weren't migrants, but slaves brought to Rome after conquest of new territories. And I've also read a logic employed similarly to support contemporary immigration that they brought with them things that were appropriated by Rome for its own benefit, not to mention the labor value needed to support a growing civilization and city-state.

      Plus by about 100 CE the Empire was geographically quite large, raising the question as to how much was migration and how much was just Romanized people moving around the existing empire. You don't think of people moving to Florida from Minnesota as necessarily a destabilizing form of migration, and a lot of the people who may have moved from Gaul to Rome were already living as Romans, speaking Latin and living in Roman cities in the provinces.

      Some of Rome's problems in the late Republican period were due to mass migrations that had nothing to do with Rome. The Cimbrian wars were caused by mass migrations from Germania into Northern Italy, migrations that continued destabilizing the greater Roman frontier and largely serving to motivate Caesar's conquest of Gaul, which for better or for worse sorted out and pacified the regional conflicts of mass migrations into Gaul for at least a century if not longer.

      To the extent that later mass migrations resulted in the fall of Rome, it's probably a better explanation that Rome had other problems, such as internal corruption and an economic structure that weakened the state and made a large frontier structurally unsupportable.

  2. Wrong as per usual Warming Alarmists by SuperKendall · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Look at the seasonal variation of temperatures in Bahgdad.

    A shift of a few degrees C is nothing compared to normal seasonal variation, even adjusting the topmost temperatures doesn't mean that much difference in reality.

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
    1. Re:Wrong as per usual Warming Alarmists by Hylandr · · Score: 2, Informative

      114 is a cold day for a Tucson summer.

      What are these climate-whiners on about this time?

      --
      ~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.
    2. Re:Wrong as per usual Warming Alarmists by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 4, Insightful

      A shift of a few degrees C is nothing compared to normal seasonal variation

      For people, that is true. People are not going to die of the heat. But their crops and pastures will dry out. So the people will either move or starve. The problem is that there is no where to move to. Even Syrians, who are more educated and secular that most other Middle Eastern people, are not wanted anywhere.

    3. Re:Wrong as per usual Warming Alarmists by quantaman · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Look at the seasonal variation of temperatures in Bahgdad.

      A shift of a few degrees C is nothing compared to normal seasonal variation, even adjusting the topmost temperatures doesn't mean that much difference in reality.

      Of course that's only kinda relevant if the temperature increases uniformly which it doesn't

      In the Middle East and North Africa, the average temperature in winter will rise by around 2.5 degrees Celsius (left) by the middle of the century, and in summer by around five degrees Celsius (right) if global greenhouse gas emissions continue to increase according to the business-as-usual scenario (RCP8,5).

      That's ~9F, would you consider that change in your summertime average to be inconsequential? The average high in Baghdad in July is 44C, if the projection is right it will become 49C, I suspect there's a few places you start to consider uninhabitable at that point.

      --
      I stole this Sig
    4. Re:Wrong as per usual Warming Alarmists by angel'o'sphere · · Score: 4, Insightful

      A shift of a few degrees C is nothing
      Says the guy who grasps nothing.

      The link you gave is using Celsius as scale, not Fahrenheit.

      This article is about: if global average increases by 2C then at "hot spots" that might mean 20C or more.

      If at those hot spots such peak temperatures are reached, then the normal seasonal variation has doubled. And the peak is so high that you can't live outside anymore, that is much difference in reality.

      --
      Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
    5. Re:Wrong as per usual Warming Alarmists by quantaman · · Score: 2

      I lived in Phoenix wen it got up to 50C one day and was/is regularly above 45C. And no AC either other than at work.

      And what if it was regularly 50C, and once hit 55C? You really think it's inconsequential?

      (oh, and I don't know how the shift in means affects the max with climate, but people dying in heat waves is definitely an issue in parts of the world)

      --
      I stole this Sig
    6. Re:Wrong as per usual Warming Alarmists by kheldan · · Score: 4, Insightful
      I don't know if you're kidding or not, but you represent a third of the problem:

      The weather is nice where I am, so I don't think the problem is real

      Then here's another third of the problem:

      The weather is terrible where I am and it used to be fine
      Followed by:
      Oh, well, just because it's bad where you are doesn't mean global warming is real

      Then the final third of the problem:

      Oh hi we're climate scientists! Since you apparently aren't paying attention to what we're saying, we're going to say it louder and be more extreme to try to make you listen!
      Followed closely by:
      Oh, well, you're just being alarmists!

      This is then exacerbated by extremists on both sides of the equation tossing around their conspiracy theories, pseudo-science, tree-hugging anti-human rhetoric, plain old-fashioned politicking, and the religious types who quietly tell you it's all part of "Gods plan", "the End Times are coming", and "soon there will be Heaven on Earth and none of this will matter anymore", or whatever other nonsense they spout. So nothing actually gets done to prove anything one way or another because everyone just keeps arguing. What will 'decide' if it's real or not will be if it either becomes Too Late To Do Anything About It (at which time everyone will continue to argue, this time about whose fault it is), or it just Goes Away On It's Own (in which case everyone will continue to argue, this time about who was wrong, who was right, and why).

      You want the TL;DR version?

      Doesn't matter, we're doomed one way or another, because humans are fucking stupid, especially in large groups

      --
      Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
    7. Re: Wrong as per usual Warming Alarmists by Namarrgon · · Score: 4, Informative

      Average high temp for a Tucson summer is 99 degrees, so no, 114 is not a cold day. In fact, there's only 7 days on record where it's ever reached that high.

      --
      Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
    8. Re:Wrong as per usual Warming Alarmists by thinkwaitfast · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Also Cold kills 20 times as many people as hot weather, according to an international study analyzing over 74 million deaths in 384 locations across 13 countries.

    9. Re:Wrong as per usual Warming Alarmists by hey! · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Except we're not talking about Baghdad getting uniformly 2C warmer, every day of the year. We're talking about 60 additional hot days in the summer with the rest of the year being roughly similar to today. Those sixty days would, almost own their own, raise the year-round average by more than 4C (not 2C). For that to happen the temperature increase on these days be closer to +20C, rather than +2C.

      A lot of denialist reckoning does this kind of simplistic reckoning -- e.g., assuming 2C global warming means exactly 2C warmer, uniformly distributed in space and season across the globe. That of course would only amount to a trivial change. But what you're actually going to get is vast increases in extreme weather (hot AND cold) which averaged out across the globe.

      Think of it this way: imagine we hold the global increase in temperature to 2C. The amount of additional kinetic energy per unit volume represented by that additional 2C, integrated over the immense volume of the atmosphere, works out to be a staggering amount of total energy, which will change the patterns of weather. Since that immense fluid is rotating, the additional energy cannot mix and diffuse out uniformly and neatly; instead it will drive massive eddies of hot and cold migrating out of their old geographic limits. You'll get all kinds of extreme weather both hot AND cold, it just all averages out to +2C temperature-wise.

      To put that perspective, current estimates are that we're capturing an additional 8 x 10^21 joules of extra solar energy per year, every single year.

      --
      Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
    10. Re:Wrong as per usual Warming Alarmists by AaronW · · Score: 2

      How about if you don't have air conditioning? A lot of people in the ME can't afford it and the power is often intermittent at best in many places. Also, clean water can be a luxury in many places in the ME.

      --
      This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
    11. Re:Wrong as per usual Warming Alarmists by myowntrueself · · Score: 2

      The 'Feels like' Temperature is a recent addition to weather forecasts and is largely imaginary.

      Are you saying that these ''Feels Like" numbers are what are being used to calculate the global temps?

      Not at all.

      As human beings we lose heat by sweating. If the air around you is saturated with water vapor sweating does not work. If the air temperature is high enough you will not lose heat and you will die.

      --
      In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
    12. Re:Wrong as per usual Warming Alarmists by GameboyRMH · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Scott Adams makes two great mistakes in that blog post: The first is that he blames science instead of industry for industry-led pseudoscientific disinformation campaigns (diet and tobacco specifically, and presumably also climate). He lays it all at the feet of science for failing to overpower these efforts with hardly a finger shaken at industry. He is saying that science has a credibility problem because of industry's lies. That's bullshit.

      The second is that he fails to see that the wrongness of science is relative. Apparently until some extremely stringent rightness threshold is passed, science's answers are uselessly wrong, and telling people to cut down on fatty foods to prevent obesity was as wrong as telling them that they're fat because they're full of demons. That's also bullshit.

      --
      "When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
    13. Re:Wrong as per usual Warming Alarmists by silentcoder · · Score: 2

      I've said for a long time that the greatest loss of life from climate change will be people killed by other people. Resource wars have a tendency to be exceptionally brutal, especially when the resources in question are essentials like food and water.

      --
      Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
    14. Re:Wrong as per usual Warming Alarmists by dave420 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      How have the scientists lost all credibility? Their findings are fine - no one has managed to challenge them. The thing about science is it doesn't matter who pays for what - the findings must stand up to scientific rigour before they are accepted into the general body of knowledge.

      It sounds like you don't understand the scientific method, and are looking for any excuse to stick your fingers in your ears. You are wasting your brain, but I think you know that, and simply don't care. What a wonderful example for future generations.

    15. Re:Wrong as per usual Warming Alarmists by silentcoder · · Score: 2

      Tectonic drift was first proven on a computer simulation, we didn't have the technology to confirm it with first-hand observation until it had been consennsus for almost 3 decades.
      That was done on an early predecessor of the PDP-10. The thing was archaic.

      We have much better simulation systems now, much better hardware to run them on - and far better statistical analysis teams to set the parameters and figure out what the results mean.

      I've never yet encountered and anti-simulationist who had a sane argument against using simulations to study things. Simulations have been the means by which we did experiments that were otherwise impossible for many decades. They are a key part of every field of science. If you reject them, you are literally putting us back to 1930 in every single field of human endeavour. That's pretty fucking crazy.
      Einstein praised "Gedanken experiments" (thought experiments) as a critical part of the scientific method - before committing lots of time and money into testing an idea - first run a test in your own mind and at least try to figure out if it *should* work. Sometimes an actual experiments isn't even possible or nobody has figured out a way to do one (yet) so this is a key feature of science. Einstein used one to test the idea of gravitational lensing, we didn't have a way to prove it with a physical experiment until nearly 10 years later - and we only started having any ways of testing such things without waiting for rare events like Jupiterian eclipses in the last few years (and have recently used some of that advanced technology to test and confirm another of his predictions - gravitational waves).
      Simulations have been key in recent refinements to and improvements to evolutionary theory as well.

      Simulations are thought experiments taken to the next level. They don't run on quite so powerful a computer, true, but on the other hand they can be scrutinized - they can be adjusted and improved and re-run with those improvements - which makes them, over all, a great improvement.
      Thought experiments have the problem that you can unconsciously alter the parameters of the experiment (like, say, the exact force of gravity) to show what you're expecting, a computer simulation places those parameters under peer-reviewable scrutiny.

      It's true that even the best simulation is still not as good as a physical experiment, but where physical experiments are not actually possible they are a critical next-best-thing. We can't do a physical experiment to test the big bang theory (or compare two slightly different versions of it), because nobody has yet figured out how to build a control universe. But we can take all the knowledge we have, plug them into a simulation and see whether the results match predictions. We can't do an experiment to figure out how complex systems like eyes evolve because nobody has a control-earth to compare against, but we can create a simulation in which a simulated organism is put under selection pressure, with a simple light-sensitive cell and allowed random mutations with the most sensitive ones surviving to breed ... and confirm that within a hundred generations they have recognizable eyes - complete with reshapable focussing lenses like ours.

      So why is simulations critical and accepted in every field of science (including ones like evolution which are infinitely more chaotic and difficult to predict than climate)... but not in climate ?

      --
      Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
    16. Re:Wrong as per usual Warming Alarmists by dave420 · · Score: 2

      In other words you really have no idea what you're talking about. No data has been faked. It's not "statistically less likely to happen than getting hit by a meteor". It's not ONLY the summer, as has been explained to you time and time again. So yes, it is "straight-up" the realm of idiots and fools, as you made it up.

      You are the only one here lying, and it's your religion which is becoming toast. Hint: If you find yourself calling the scientific method bogus, you might just be an idiot.

    17. Re:Wrong as per usual Warming Alarmists by david_thornley · · Score: 2

      I've been paying attention. I've seen a lot of people decide for stupid reasons that global warming can't be happening, and since climate scientists say that it is they need to come up with inane reasons why climate scientists don't have credibility. Maligning climate science and climate scientists is the hallmark of the denier. (Skeptics may be dubious of climate science, but won't make up ludicrous stories about a massive conspiracy or a whole field of scientists clinging to a false orthodoxy.)

      --
      "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
  3. More Great Editing by chipschap · · Score: 5, Informative

    This is in the summary:

    "the temperature in summer in these regions will increase more than twofold"

    This literally means that if the temp averaged 90F it will then average 180F. That's a lot of climate change.

    Could we, you know, maybe have something that makes sense? Like "the temperature in summer in these regions will increase twice as much as previously expected"?

    Slashdot may have new owners but the editing hasn't quite gotten there yet.

    1. Re:More Great Editing by JesseMcDonald · · Score: 4, Informative

      "the temperature in summer in these regions will increase more than twofold"

      This literally means that if the temp averaged 90F it will then average 180F. That's a lot of climate change.

      It's worse than that, because 0F is just an arbitrary point on the temperature scale. The only sensible way to interpret a doubling of temperature is relative to absolute zero, so this means that if the temperate averaged 90F (305 Kelvin) it will then average 638F (610 Kelvin).

      That is, indeed, well outside the range of human habitability.

      --
      "The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
  4. Re:Welp, we're screwed. by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 2

    I'd guess at minimum, plant respiration would be hindered due to higher rates of evaporation.

    Plants lose moisture through leaf pores. The pores are open to absorb CO2. As CO2 levels go up, they can absorb enough CO2 through fewer and smaller pores, so they lose less water. So higher temps will be bad for plants, but the higher CO2 levels will help mitigate the problem somewhat.

  5. Yay, more migration by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The syrian civil war was started because of a 5 year drought. We got 1 million new migrants in Europe. Unless we quit destroying the world climate we'll have 500 million migrants. Stop Using Oil Now! And retarded americans stop using gas guzzling cars.

  6. That isn't how bell curves work by JoshuaZ · · Score: 4, Interesting

    That isn't how a bell curve works. If you move a bell curve slightly to the left, the big change isn't in the average, but is in how much you have where you end up sampling from the extremes of the distribution. This is why for example, China doesn't have nearly as many top-tier soccer players as some much smaller countries, or how the best runners are almost all Kenyan even though the Kenyan isn't much faster than the average in most other populations. One very controversial example of this is how some populations (e.g. Ashkenazi Jews) have many more Fields Medal and Nobel Prize winners than one would expect naively, but if you move the average intelligence up just a tiny bit, you get a massive change in how many really brilliant people you have.

  7. Re:The Dems will see to that no matter what by mark-t · · Score: 2

    In the months leading up to every US election I always keep hearing about how so many Americans will want to move up to Canada if or when so-and-so becomes president, and then it never happens.... even when that person wins the election.

    Honestly, it's getting old... how many times do you think you can cry 'wolf' and people will believe you?

    --
    File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
  8. Re:The Dems will see to that no matter what by BarbaraHudson · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The frozen tundra, even if completely thawed out, isn't suitable for farming. You're going to have to stop breeding so much no matter how you slice it. 1 child per family will probably be the world-wide norm in the coming years.

    --
    "Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
  9. Re: And this makes the Republicans... by Locke2005 · · Score: 2, Informative

    Summer heat waves have killed hundreds in Europe (mostly elderly), although it hard to distinguish "global warming" from "normal variations in temperature".

    --
    I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
  10. Re:The Dems will see to that no matter what by frovingslosh · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Child, are you too young to remember the Americans who moved to Canada due to the politics of the 60's and early 70's? I know people who went, and the numbers were not insignificant.

    --
    I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
  11. Re:Look on the bright side by BarbaraHudson · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Tundra, even thawed out, doesn't have enough topsoil to make farming possible. So forget that idea. Russia is going to be nervous about Chinese climate refugees. Both have nukes, and both share a common border in certain areas.

    --
    "Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
  12. Re:The Dems will see to that no matter what by frovingslosh · · Score: 2

    The lesson we learn from California is that any soil can be made suitable for farming, just add enough fertilizer, water and sun.

    --
    I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
  13. more power generation by xfizik · · Score: 2

    More reasons to build thermal and solar power generation there.

  14. Re:The Dems will see to that no matter what by MightyMartian · · Score: 3, Informative

    Forgetting, of course, the amount of methane trapped in the permafrost in Siberia and Canada, which would greatly accelerate the warming, as methane is a far more potent greenhouse gas than CO2.

    --
    The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
  15. Re: And this makes the Republicans... by MightyMartian · · Score: 2

    You distinguish by looking at trend lines. That means you can't definitely say any particular extreme temperature event is caused by climate change, but you can look at the overall frequency and temperatures of such events and correlate them to other data points, and can say, overall, AGW is going to be responsible for many, if not most of them.

    --
    The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
  16. Re:Welp, we're screwed. by MightyMartian · · Score: 4, Insightful

    There are benefits, but the costs overwhelm the benefits.

    A malfunctioning septic system may see your lawn grow greener, but that's usually followed by a sewage smell and a very large bill to fix the problem.

    --
    The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
  17. Re:The Dems will see to that no matter what by mark-t · · Score: 2

    Your example is not really a counterpoint to the one I was making. In fact, most of the Americans who moved to Canada at the time you refer to did not ever "threaten" to do so... they simply did, without any announcement of their intention in advance (in fact, to have done so would have defeated the purpose because of the situation they were trying to get away from).

    My point remains... historically, almost all Americans who announce that they will move to Canada based on the outcome of an election before the election has even happened do not. If the situation is truly dire enough for them, they will move without feeling any need to announce it so long in advance. In fact, the very fact that they *CAN* freely announce such a claimed intention is actually proof that the situation is not that dire anyways, and probably not worth moving to another country for. At least not for most people.

    --
    File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
  18. Re:the opposite may well happen by dwywit · · Score: 2

    I used to trust the National Geographic, but since most of it was sold to R. Murdoch, I take anything from NG with a big grain of salt. Hang on, no - I just believe the opposite.

    --
    They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom
  19. Re:They were the worthless ones by silentcoder · · Score: 4, Insightful

    You seem to have a real issue with Carter... odd for the man who is probably the most productive ex-president in American history. The man only went and eradicated and entire disease from humanity since he left office, and he is a few months from eradicating a SECOND one.

    But yeah... a president who actively avoided wars and were more focussed on saving lives than taking them and has the sense to employ highly skilled scientists to tell him how to solve problems rather than lobbyists (and continued to do so after leaving office - which is how he achieved the eradication of one disease and is on the verge of doing it again) ... can't have that !

    --
    Unicode killed the ASCII-art *