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Climate Change Will Stir 'Unimaginable' Refugee Crisis, Says Military (theguardian.com)
Citing military experts, The Guardian is reporting that if the rise in global warming is held under 2 degrees Celsius, there still could be a major humanitarian crisis to sort out. From the report: Climate change is set to cause a refugee crisis of "unimaginable scale," according to senior military figures, who warn that global warming is the greatest security threat of the 21st century and that mass migration will become the "new normal." The generals said the impacts of climate change were already factors in the conflicts driving a current crisis of migration into Europe, having been linked to the Arab Spring, the war in Syria and the Boko Haram terrorist insurgency. Military leaders have long warned that global warming could multiply and accelerate security threats around the world by provoking conflicts and migration. They are now warning that immediate action is required. "Climate change is the greatest security threat of the 21st century," said Maj Gen Munir Muniruzzaman, chairman of the Global Military Advisory Council on climate change and a former military adviser to the president of Bangladesh. He said one metre of sea level rise will flood 20% of his nation. "Weâ(TM)re going to see refugee problems on an unimaginable scale, potentially above 30 million people."
...and yet the article proceeds to imagine this crisis.
This reminds me of something I mentioned here on Slashdot just the other day. Though it's not looking like San Francisco will really be underwater by 2020, if it is, refugees from San Francisco will come *here* wearing their assless leather pants. That's worrisome.
Now back to News for Nerds.
“Climate change is the greatest security threat of the 21st century,” said Maj Gen Munir Muniruzzaman, chairman of the Global Military Advisory Council on climate change.."
Don't deny the science. The earth is 1.8 degrees hotter than the last 100 year average. Not sure why I would relocate over a 1 degree change in average temperature, but I just follow the science not hysteria.
I agree, +1 insightful, but perhaps not for the same reason as yours.
Temperatures are trending upwards. Ice caps are melting. Sea levels are rising. These are observed facts.
Look at human history. War is a frequent consequence of competition for limited resources. In the case of climate-change, that resource will be land. Land that is not underwater. Land that you can still grow crops on. Land that has not been rendered uninhabitable due to violent weather-fluctuations.
Sadly, preparing a military that can manage such a dystopic future may be a grim necessity.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
Ah yes, some oil company-funded think tanks and a couple of climatologists who have never published any of their AGW-crushing research must be speaking the truth, whereas the overwhelming majority of experts in the field are faking it.
Oh, and I think at this juncture useful to remind this AC that those aforementioned oil companies knew about AGW forty years ago.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
The amount of money in AGW is a fraction of the amount of money oil companies pump out of the ground every week.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Well not until we can build a wall and have the oceans pay for it....
My eyes reflect the stars and a smile lights up my face.
Models predict temperature rises, temperature rises are observed. What you're doing is moving the goal posts so you can make it sound like your childish denial has any basis in fact.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
We'll just build a wall. And make them pay for it?
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
A bit dated from 2009, but a good series on future-casting the Geo-politics of climate change. http://gwynnedyer.com/radio/
That's 30 million people in Bangladesh alone, not worldwide.
How come Slashdot never gets Slashdotted?
And where is your evidence for that claim?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
You sound exactly like you work on the @HouseScience committee.
Who yesterday tweeted out an anti climate change article. From Breitbart. Because it got colder. In winter.
Holy Fucking Shit.
https://twitter.com/HouseScien...
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
Well, desired land perhaps.
All of the people in Florida could fit in Wyoming, at half the population density of Florida currently (estimated in my head).
Even the worst models have water rising a few feet in 100 years. Which wipes out almost all coastal cities, but not a huge percentage of land - for the US at least. So people will have to move. Orderly. Because even at an extreme 1" per year, they can walk away from it.
Now, several other countries are truly fucked. But we don't really need a huge military increase for that.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
A lot of the people living in low lying areas, particular in Asia, don't exactly have the resources to pick up and leave, and if you bothered to read the article you would realize this is exactly what these people are talking about, large numbers of people living in areas that climate change will make relatively uninhabitable, or at least considerably more unpleasant to live in, getting up and leaving. You know... migrations.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
There's plenty of land. There will also be plenty of useful farmland - it just might not be the same land that makes good farmland today.
The problem isn't really an overall resource shortage, it's that which land is valuable will change. Wars have certainly started over just that. People will need to move, likely across current borders. How will that end up?
No need for some flood of refugees, though. This is a slow change, by human measure. Plenty of time to work on moving, perhaps emigrating, to where you want to be. It can take years to relocate, but we have years. Make good use of them if you believe in all this.
If your worried about a flood of refugees ruining your home area even though you found a good place, promptly, well, join the club.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
There hasn't been a serious claim of global cooling in nearly half a century. This is like saying "Well, you know, up until relatively recently lots of people believed the sun circled the Earth."
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Translation: I have no evidence.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
1. A primary method of convincing others is to ridicule and insult them. Notice the responses and downvotes this post will get.
Repeated ignorance in the face of facts deserves ridicule.
2. We have seen vastly higher CO2 levels in planetary history and right now we are seeing what is actually all time lows. We should expect CO2 increases and, in fact, hope for them as going much below 300 ppm would see the beginning of a massive plant die off - there's a reason commercial greenhouses pump CO2 into their facilities.
Not in human history.
And the level sat at ~280pp for several million years without a die off in sight.
3. The temperature change we are seeing now is far from unusual, we've seen similar changes in both rate and magnitude before. In fact, what we are seeing now does not stand out from background noise.
Completely wrong.
The current rate is over 333,000x faster than anything that has come before.
4. Measuring temperatures from millions of years ago to tenths of a degree with any certainty is not realistic. Yet, that's what we're doing.
Wrong.
5. The measuring devices we use, known as Stevenson Screens, have approximately 70% of them improperly cited in such a way as to produce more than 2 degrees of error making it appear hotter (see http://www.surfacestations.org...).
Still wrong.
6. We know some, perhaps a lot, of data has been fabricated (e.g. Yamal tree ring data) or manipulated in such a way as to produce the desired results (e.g. the so called hockey stick graph) and how it conveniently always gets colder in the past as data is adjusted.
Yep, wrong again.
7. We know from the ClimateGate email leaks that coordinated efforts to suppress any conflicting information/studies occurred and were successful.
Manufactured scandal.
IE, lies.
8. Many times the data and methodology of studies supporting AGW is not shared and that even occurs illegally in the refusal of FOIA requests.
Total fabrication
9. So many of the predicted side effects of AGW have not come to pass. For example, we were supposed to be seeing Katrina like hurricanes as the norm but instead the exact opposite happened and we have the longest stretch of reduced cyclonic activity since we began keeping records or the millions of climate refugees that were supposed to be created by now - the UN 62nd General assembly in July 2008 said: it had been estimated that there would be between 50 million and 200 million environmental migrants by 2010. They now say it'll be by 2020 - only a little over 3 years from now. It's not happening. [More here](https://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/04/02/the-big-list-of-failed-climate-predictions/).
Actually 2012 was a record year for tropical storm damage, especially in areas that don't typically see much of them.
Cherry picking for only hurricanes, a geographically restricted term, leaves out rather a lot of the globe.
10. Experiments allegedly proving AGW are sometimes blatantly faked ([see here](https://wattsupwiththat.com/climate-fail-files/gore-and-bill-nye-fail-at-doing-a-simple-co2-experiment/)).
Link to nonscientists who lie about science, and get paid to do so.
11. The breakdown of the scientific method as it becomes science by consensus with massive reliance on appeals to authority and popularity as well as theories that are not falsifiable.
Myth.
12. Computer models are based on assumptions that may or may not be accurate, computer models are not necessarily "proof" of the future. For example, the "pause" of the last 15 years that is causing all the confusion now.
There was no confusion.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
If there is enough of them, and it is a matter of SURVIVAL, a wall isn't going to stop them. It will turn very ugly.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
Over 100 years. Imagine the US before World War 1, imagine it now. That's the change that can happen, slowly, in 100 years. So, no, not a big deal.
Or reduce/mitigate pollution.
Which one is easier?
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
Reducing CO2 emissions is a lot cheaper than building vast dykes around New York City.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
It's all those Marxist SJWs in the US Military pushing their climate change agenda based on a Chinese hoax just so they can get money from George Soros.
Give me a second, and I'll work in a reference to #pizzagate, pedophilia, third-wave feminism and corrupt games journalists.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Oh, and I think at this juncture useful to remind this AC that those aforementioned oil companies knew about AGW forty years ago.
Yes and I remember US Pres. Carter trying to bring the issue to the forefront, he even installed solar panels on the White House which Regan ripped down as soon as he took office. Pres. Carter stated we need to start to address it now before it gets too expensive.
Maybe something will be done when most of Florida is under water. Some very young people here may even see that start to happen and people will still be voting for deniers. Well, when Florida 1/3 it's size maybe that will solve the issue of electing the people we do in this nation.
They literally meant colder from last month. Exactly the same as the Hawaii senator holding a snow ball, or Trump saying it's colder during a snowstorm.
These people are guiding science funding at a national level. And literally don't understand seasons, much less anything at a global scale.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
But instead of paying those taxes, I'd rather pay a bit more in goods and services to cover the costs of reducing carbon emissions to reduce the rate of global warming and slow the sea level rise.
That's rather ... optimistic. Maybe that could work. Maybe it's already too late. Maybe China will talk a good game while quietly doubling their CO2 output. Maybe it's all solar activity and Antarctica is gone regardless of human activity. When it comes to important things, it's best to plan for more than the optimistic case, especially for years-long efforts.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Indeed, from TFS: "having been linked to the Arab Spring, the war in Syria and the Boko Haram terrorist insurgency."
No matter where you stand on climate change, linking it to the above is more than a bit of a stretch.
Which brings up a point. If you're serious about doing something about AGW/climate change, articles such as this one move the cause backward, not forward, by giving ammunition to AGM/cc opponents.
Actually, not so much of a stretch. The civil war in Syria was preceded by a massive migration of people from rural to urban areas due to an unprecedented drought:
https://news.vice.com/article/...
Global warming doesn't directly cause civil wars, but migration and the resulting social instability most certainly does, and will.
Ah, the garbage dumpster argument: pile enough garbage up, and tell the reader somewhere in the dumpster one argument might be real; you need to wade through all the garbage to find it.
I don't have time to wade through all the garbage. I'll go with the three strikes you're out approach: if your first three arguments aren't convincing, I'll stop there.
There are lots of reasons I am skeptical of this: 1. A primary method of convincing others is to ridicule and insult them. Notice the responses and downvotes this post will get.
Not relevant.
2. We have seen vastly higher CO2 levels in planetary history
Yep. And, you know what? All of those higher CO2 levels were associated with higher global temperatures! That's not evidence against the effect of carbon dioxide on global warming-- it's evidence for the effect of carbon dioxide on global warming
and right now we are seeing what is actually all time lows..
Nope. Current levels are higher than it's ever been for as long as we can measure the CO2 record from ice cores, well over a million years. I think you're talking about really long ago. In that you'd be correct: carbon dioxide levels were higher before the Pleistocene. These were also, however, times when the Earth didn't have an ice cap or glaciers. So, again: this isn't evidence against the effect of carbon dioxide on climate-- it's evidence for it.
We should expect CO2 increases and, in fact, hope for them as going much below 300 ppm would see the beginning of a massive plant die off - there's a reason commercial greenhouses pump CO2 into their facilities.
Slightly misleading. Carbon dioxide increases plant growth-- but only in environments in which CO2 is the limiting resource, not other nutrients, water, or sunlight. In a greenhouse, where you make sure that the temperature, nutrients, and water are all optimal, sure, it's worth adding CO2. Outside, though, it's only one effect among many.
3. The temperature change we are seeing now is far from unusual, we've seen similar changes in both rate and magnitude before. In fact, what we are seeing now does not stand out from background noise.
Doesn't stand out from the background... over tens of millions of years. Even so, actually, the current rate of warming is pretty exceptional. It does, however, stand out from the background over the period in which we have good measurements of both temperature and of all the other forcing factors, such a solar irradiance. So: no.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
On the flip side, if Climate Change is your religion, and yet you live in low-lying coast land, you're kind of an idiot at this point. If you Believe, then topographical maps are free and you should be taking care of yourself and your family - live and work where it will remain safe, and make the move now, not after everything goes crazy.
So ... your solution to global warming is that impoverished villagers in Bangladesh should be buying condos in Aspen?
>No matter where you stand on climate change, linking it to the above is more than a bit of a stretch.
Likely your bias contributed to your reading into this a claim never made, and that is that all climate change = Man made Global warming. Some are related, but if you re-read this article with that difference in mind, it is then true. That small localized changes will get worse as the world gets hotter is made more important by understanding how vulnerable the world is to small changes in local climates.
I think too many people just don't get that ag societies still exist, and need to be informed that it often doesn't take much to trigger a flare up when you have so many people living in poverty. It may be wrong to conflate climate change of the past (regional droughts, water shortages, poor crops due to weather variations.) as closely with man made global warming, as this article hints. But it would be difficult or impossible to say localized climate change didn't contribute some to all of those uprisings.
https://www.americanprogress.o...
"A once-in-a-century winter drought in China contributed to global wheat shortages and skyrocketing bread prices in Egypt, the worldâ(TM)s largest wheat importer." (Sternberg, p. 7)
"Of the world's major wheat-importing companies per capita, "the top nine importers are all in the Middle East; seven had political protests resulting in civilian deaths in 2011." (Sternberg, p. 12)
"The world is entering a period of `agflation,` or inflation driven by rising prices for agricultural commodities." (Johnstone and Mazo, p. 21)
"Drought and desertification across much of the Sahel-northern Nigeria, for example, is losing 1,350 square miles a year to desertificationâ"have undermined agricultural and pastoral livelihoods," contributing to urbanization and massive flows of migrants. (Werz and Hoffman, p. 37)
"As the region's population continues to climb, water availability per capita is projected to plummet. Rapid urban expansion across the Arab world increasingly risks overburdening existing infrastructure and outpacing local capacities to expand service."(Michel and Yacoubian, p. 45)
"We have reached the point where a regional climate event can have a global extent." (Sternberg, p. 10)
You do know there decades of scientific fact about actual rising seas, right?
http://sealevel.colorado.edu/
Or that 2 quadrillion pounds of ice melted off Greenland alone in 4 years, right? A quadrillion is a thousand trillion.
https://weather.com/news/clima...
Like to the point that municipalities have to deal with that actuality coming soon:
http://www.miamidade.gov/plann...
Or, you're yet another Troll. I'll go with that.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
Well you can count the Syrian, Ethioian and Eritrean refugees as Climate refugees. Mega droughts have triggered the fighting in Syria and the exodus from the Horn of Africa
**Life is too short to be serious**
"2. We have seen vastly higher CO2 levels in planetary history and right now we are seeing what is actually all time lows. We should expect CO2 increases and, in fact, hope for them as going much below 300 ppm would see the beginning of a massive plant die off - there's a reason commercial greenhouses pump CO2 into their facilities."
We have seen vastly higher?
When? Some time before 400,000 years ago?
The refugee crisis you refer to is actually the second Syrian refugee crisis.
The first refugee was an internal displacement of 1.5 million people (out of a population of 20 million) over the period 2007-2011 during crops failed due to unprecedented drought. Over two hundred villages were completely depopulated, and 40% of Syria's agricultural workforce was lost. Domestic wheat production crashed, and prices skyrocketed as it was replaced by imports.
So you had over a million hungry, unemployed displaced people crowded into cities, when a bad harvest in Russia caused a spike in global wheat prices. Check out the graph in this link labelled "World Monthly Grains Price Index" and note the massive upswing in prices in 2010 - 2011. There was a similar price spike in 2007, but back then Syria produced essentially all the wheat it consumed. In 2010 Syria only produced 80% of what it needed, resulting in underconsumption -- aka "starvation". You can check out the figures here.
Finally note that the so-called "Day of Rage" which critically destabilized the regime took place on March 15, 2011. The timing was not coincidental.
Now you can talk to me about "political struggle" in Syria. The roots of that struggle are of course decades old. But the effects were exacerbated by the worst drought in 900 years.
Without the sarcasm, try to stay on topic lest you continue to be perceived as a shithead Troll.
I have stayed on topic. Shithead troll I guess is a matter of perspective. Syria is exactly the kind of scenario security planners are worried about. And one reason they are worried is that many in the public literally find the idea of climate-driven refugees unimaginable. People who've been paying attention find it all too easy to imagine.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
In reality, physicists studying CO2 at the end of 19th century understood its solar absorption properties and hypothesized that if CO2 levels increased in the atmosphere, that it could lead to greater heating.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
There is absolutely nothing controversial from a scientific perspective about even fractional increases in CO2 in the atmosphere causing increased trapping of energy in the lower atmosphere.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Nope. Plain old wars and good old fashioned political corruption did that.
The "drought caused the Syrian civil war" theory is, frankly, crap. It was based off of one paper, which built a big statistical mountain off of a molehill. They exaggerated the number of people affected by the drought, and failed to show any sort of cause and effect. For that matter, the ACTUAL cause of the migration was a financial - subsidies for diesel and fertilizers were cut.
The civil war in Syria, by the way, started two years AFTER the drought ended. If it was caused by the drought, it seems like the events would have been closer together.
Key word being "military". The U.S. military is the single largest user of carbon fuels. The U.S. military gets most of it's funding to ensure the world's gas station (the Middle East) keeps pumping oil.
So, yeah, you might want to pay attention if even the Pentagon is saying climate change is going to have serious consequences. It's like Philip Morris talking about the cancerous substances in tobacco - if even they are admitting it's a problem, why are you continuing to deny it?
Attempting to simplify the crises in Syria by pointing at climate change seriously under states all other factors. Hell, one of your own links (the usda one) clearly shows that Syria has been able to meet its needs IF allowed via imports
The USDA link shows no such thing; it shows Syria eating up its reserves as it fails to import enough wheat to make up the shortfall. Yes, Assad underwrote the price of bread, but there wasn't enough subsidized bread to meet demand, forcing people to buy non-subsidized bread which increased in price six-fold. The net bread expenditure went up by 20% in a country where many people spend half their income on food.
I'm not a reductionist; situations like this have multiple important factors. The Assad/Islamist thing had been simmering for decades -- generations really. Had that situation been different, the climate shock might not have destabilized the country. In point of fact bread prices were an issue throughout the Middle East and a major factor in the Arab Spring. Syria was arguably better positioned than most other Arab countries, but the stress of having 5% of your population displaced on top of the deep and old fault lines broke the country apart.
This is precisely how climate shock is going to work. It won't be like the proverbial frog in a pot of boiling water; it'll be formerly rare occurrences happening more frequently and stressing vulnerable populations. Take sea level rise; cities won't drown slpowly, but what was once a hundred year flood will become twenty year flood. That will stress coastal cities, and the results depend on how stable and wealthy a particular city is.
For example were sea level to rise almost a meter by 2100 (as is now within the scope of mainstream positions), the very wealthy coastal city I live in would go the Venice route and build a tidal barrier, which would conservatively cost at least ten billion dollars. Chittagong Bengladesh, however, will be screwed. My city has twice the GDP of Bengladesh as a whole even though it has 3% of the population.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
The generals said the impacts of climate change were already factors in the conflicts driving a current crisis of migration into Europe, having been linked to the Arab Spring, the war in Syria and the Boko Haram terrorist insurgency.
This sort of donkey shit is part of the reason why the anti-climate change movement has so much steam behind it. Even blaming stuff like Hurricane Katrina on climate change was pretty bad, but this? It shouldn't be mentioned. It's senselessly injecting tangential politics into an already senselessly politicized issue. I'm sure someone has a very clever conjecture-heavy explanation for these claims, but I highly, highly, highly doubt that global warming was remotely significant in the genesis of any of those things.
I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but Syria didn't suddenly erupt in chaos because the banana harvest was a bit low this year.