Climate Change Is A Threat To Global Security, Says Pachauri Of IPCC
by Kimberley D. Mok, Montreal, Canada 
on 10.17.07
With a Nobel Peace Prize behind it, it’s back to business for the UN’s climate change watchdog IPCC and its head, Dr. Rajendra Pachauri – starting with today’s dire prediction that even with present efforts to curb global warming, sea levels could still continue to rise for a long, long time.
"The inertia in the system is such that ... the impacts of climate change will continue for a long time," said Pachauri. "In the case of sea level rise it will continue for decades, for centuries or millennia," he told reporters in Geneva during the inauguration of the Global Humanitarian Forum, a new organization for coordinating global humanitarian aid efforts.
In addition, Pachauri emphasized the need to recognize that changes to global climates will most likely increase incidents of human conflicts as resources – such as water and arable land – become scarce, whether it is due to desertification or flooding, or other extreme weather events.
It is something we are now witnessing, for example, in parts of sub-Saharan Africa and especially in the Darfur conflict of Sudan, where water scarcity certainly played a part in escalating desperate bids for survival into all-out genocidal violence.
It seems that if we are to have a measure of peace and true progress for all of humanity, it is necessary to strike these conflicts which have their root in poverty – something that large-scale initiatives such as the United Nation’s 2015 Millennium Development Goals are attempting to address. However, Pachauri rightly points out that rapid climate change is threatening this effort to end poverty (and by extension, threatening world peace as well).
In an excerpt of a piece published yesterday in the Sydney Morning Herald, Pachauri writes:
Climate change is likely to add to several stresses that already exist in the poorest regions of the world and affect the ability of societies in these regions to pursue sustainable livelihoods.By 2020 between 75 million and 250 million people are projected to be exposed to an increase in water stress due to climate change in Africa. Coupled with increased demand, this will adversely affect livelihoods and exacerbate water-related problems.
Another sector likely to be affected adversely in some of the poorest regions of the world is agriculture. It has been assessed that agricultural production in many African countries and regions would be severely compromised by climate variability and change.
The area suitable for agriculture, the length of growing seasons and yield potential - particularly along the margins of semi-arid and arid areas - are expected to decrease. In some countries yields from rain-fed agriculture could be reduced by up to 50 per cent by 2020.
…
The cost of mitigation, as assessed by the climate change panel, is very modest in relation to the cost of impacts across the world. If mitigation is not implemented, then income and wealth disparities between nations will increase, and the existence of poverty on a large scale, which should be ethically unacceptable, could pose a threat to global security and stability.
The possibility of large numbers of people becoming environmental refugees is not only a humanitarian problem of serious proportions but also has the potential for social disruption that needs to be avoided.
Stringent mitigation needs to be undertaken immediately, and existing technologies and methods are available for this. Adaptation to climate change, particularly involving the poorest communities in the world, assumes urgency.
::Sydney Morning Herald (full article here)
See also ::Climate Change to Blame for Darfur Says Ban Ki Moon, ::Zerofootprint: What if Climate Crisis was World War III?, ::Darfur Conflict - Wikipedia
Image: Lynsey Addario, DarfurDarfur.org
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Does Al Gore deserve the Nobel Peace Prize??
If only the title of Al Gore's iconic global warming documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth," was the only misleading thing about it. On Oct. 8, the British High Court, following an appeal by a vexed parent, blocked the government's decision to distribute the film to every British secondary school. The court ruled that the partisan, ideologically charged film is deceptive in at least 11 aspects.
By law, any teacher who wishes to present the documentary in a classroom in Britain must not only identify the specious "truths" to students, but also preface the film with a disclaimer that it is a political work promoting only one side of the debate. Should any instructor fail to do so, he or she would be in breach of the Education Act of 1996 and guilty of political indoctrination.
Essentially, England's highest authority, akin to our Supreme Court, is defining the movie as propaganda, no different than the fabrications spread by any other extreme, radical group in history.
Propaganda is defined as a "manipulation of information to influence public opinion ... often containing misleading statements and lies. Propagandists emphasize the elements of information that support their position and de-emphasize or exclude those that do not."
Is Al Gore a propagandist? Well, let's see.
Al Gore: Global warming could stop the Gulf Stream, hurling all of Europe into another full-blown ice age.
Government experts: The very notion of such a phenomenon is, inherently, scientifically implausible. Not only is the Gulf Stream not the reason Europe stays moderately warm in the winter, but it flows because of wind, not currents. Even Al Gore would admit that global warming can have no impact on wind. In other words, the Gulf Stream is perpetually safe, at least from the "threat" of climate change. Lie.
Al Gore: Mt. Kilimanjaro's melting snows are clear evidence of the immediate impacts of global warming. England's government experts admitted that not only is there no evidence to support this claim, but it is blatantly untrue. Various other isolated, natural phenomena are wholly responsible. Lie.
Al Gore: Evidence from ice cores show that rising levels of carbon dioxide have caused increases in temperature over the last 650,000 years.
Government experts: Levels of carbon dioxide have preceded any trace of rise in temperature by at least 800 to 2,000 years. Elementary school reasoning can easily reveal the inconsistency in this proclaimed correlation. Lie.
Al Gore: By utilizing emotional and visceral photographs of Hurricane Katrina, he blamed the catastrophe on global warming.
Government experts: It is impossible to blame any single, anomalous event on climate change. Not only was this factually incorrect, it was utterly insensitive to those who suffered. Using such a tragedy for a blatantly false, self-serving purpose is simply morally disgraceful. Moreover, the same scientist whose findings Gore used to correlate the strength of hurricanes to global warming said himself that we cannot claim such a cause-and-effect relation. Lie.
Al Gore: Human emission of carbon dioxide will cause most of Greenland's 630,000 square miles of ice to melt by 2100, causing an increase in sea levels of over 20 feet in a mere 90 years.
This is alarming, almost as if someone decided to invent the fact out of whole cloth to frighten the world community into believing something untrue. The United Nations' review of global warming found that it will take millennia for that amount of ice to melt, according to the policymaker's summary. The rise in sea level in 2100, moreover, will be somewhere between 8 and 17 inches.
Al Gore overestimates - or, more appropriately, purposely exaggerates - the consequences by 2,000 percent. Gore's second-favorite example of melting ice is in Antarctica. Using his ever-impressive shrewdness, he presents evidence that only surveys ice sheets from the Western half and also only dates to 2002, a mere 5 years ago. Unfortunately for him, when scientists looked at the entire Antarctic from 1992, the evidence showed that the ice there is actually increasing. Lie.
The lies are precisely what I want to address. I am not challenging global warming's existence; I am simply challenging its immediacy. Al Gore wants us to believe that our children and grandchildren will be physically harmed, or at least gravely inconvenienced, by the phenomenon.
The reality, as presented by the U.N. and the British High Court, is that even our great-great-great-great-grandchildren will not feel any sort of impact. Yes, we must safeguard against climate change's eventual effects, but we cannot sacrifice our entire political system to join the hot new fad.
Gore's eschatological depiction threatens our vital policies right now. By fabricating smoking gun after smoking gun, he has whirled the scientific and general community into a panic, causing them to believe global warming is a bigger danger in the next century than economic hardship, terrorism, war and hunger, and we must put forth our every resource to combat it.
This is why the British High Court defines Gore as a propagandist. He "manipulates information," "emphasizes evidence that supports his view," and "de-emphasizes any that does not" in order to deceive the public so it will join his quest for personal glory. Following his devastating presidential election loss in 2000, he fell off the face of the Earth. Searching for an edge to get his name out, he settled on a ripe, hot-button issue. After all, no one can deny the attention he has received because of this film - possibly more than the cause itself.
He even just won the Nobel Peace Prize, on top of his Oscar, and has a newfound hope for a presidential bid in 2008. Now, to whom is the truth really inconvenient?
Right-wingies just can't cut a break these days. Poor babies.