Friday, June 28, 2013

fmt: Just Hot Air.... by Leanos Fernandez

Just hot air

June 28, 2013
The World Bank warned early this month that South- East Asia, one of the few prosperous economic zones on earth today could have to be bracing for more forest fires and clouds of smog.









By Leanos Fernandez
Climate change has been a subject of ridicule, disbelief and anger in many parts of the globe, engaging opposing sides that include political parties, non-governmental organisations and a whole army of researchers, scientists and environmentalists.
The reasons are obvious, as greater more dreadful fires rage on for days and weeks, flood waters inundate coastal and internal regions, tornadoes, hurricanes and earthquakes wreak untold material destruction while claiming hundreds if not thousands of lives. In all this, actual climate change continues to be overriden by business agendas and expansionary policies.
The realistic outcomes of years of promised actions and literal implementation have been deplorable. As governments agree to change and submit to findings by experts, the followup has been twofold — agreements ending up in renewed verbal assurances to “co-operate in future” — and inaction because of the need for further revisions.
Climate change, the Washington DC-based World Bank warned early this month that South- East Asia, one of the few prosperous economic zones on earth today could have to be bracing for more forest fires and clouds of smog.
Other parts of the globe have also not been spared the dire effects of climate change as evidenced by recent developments in the US. With American farmers, ranchers and agricultural operators facing increasing risks to their livelihoods as a result of climate change, attitudes too are changing, albeit too inadequately and slowly.
So, when the bank came up with the 255- page report last Monday, many developed and developing countries saw it as an ominous sign of things to come in the near future. Poor countries especially saw the report as not just bad news but felt it addressed disastrous conditions that may further hamper economic growth.
Some of the report’s more salient highlights were not unfamiliar, but reassuring. For example, the International Energy Agency had concluded that there’s a 40% chance temperatures will rise more than 4°C by 2100, while the United Nations (UN) reckons it could higher, around 5°C (from 3.5°C) by then.
What is especially of concern is that the fallout is expected to reverberate across the three regions mentioned in the report and would hit the cost of food, producing severe if not unbearable human conditions for those living in poverty.
“4°C may not sound like a lot, but it almost compares to the temperature difference between the last ice age and today, and is happening during one person’s lifetime,” Kaisa Kosonen, advisor and energy campaigner at the Netherlands-located Greenpeace International said.
In particular, she added, it will not be a comfortable nor healthy state of affairs for the three targeted areas — South-East Asia, South Asia and the Sub-Saharan Africa.
Losing sleep
What the president of the World Bank said in the report is worth taking note of in the light of the gravity of what is taking place on the climate front. Jim Yong Kim’s words are as haunting as they are a shot across the bow.
He said there was a 97%-98% consensus among scientists that global warming was real and caused by human activity.
“If you disagree with the science of humancaused climate change, you are not disagreeing that there is anthropogenic climate change (chiefly of environmental pollution and pollutants) originating in human activity. What you are disagreeing with is science itself,” Kim said.
In his press release, Kim said climate change, which is already unfolding, would batter the slums even more and greatly harm the lives and hopes of individuals and families.
“The conclusions in the report should make all of us lose sleep over what our world will look like in our lifetime. A possible scenario is a world 2°C warmer in 20-30 years that could ruin vast fields of African farmland while submerging large cities in South Asia, killing off fisheries in South-East Asia,” he warned.
The report was based on scientific analysis and computer simulations conducted by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and Climate Analytics.
What did the World Bank highlight in its latest climate report that should either scare us into taking proactive measures or compel us to seek the intervention of legislators? The short answer is — unprecedented heatwave, widespread food shortage, more intense shifting rain patterns and unpredictable changes in weather conditions that can likely take a heavy toll on human life and property.
The above are just few of the main impending disasters that can descend on the global population if relevant agencies and governments don’t act. What is relevant to the subject of climate change and what ought to persuade undecided minds is that much of the research and study gone into it (the subject of climate change) has been done by experts who have had decades of experience and exposure.
Kim couldn’t be more blunt in his expectations of a world in which so many still doubt the role of climate change in both human life and industrial expansion.
“It is time to stop arguing about whether climate change is real or not,’’ he said.
The Copenhagen fiasco
Some of the biggest emitters of CO2 are also some of the most reluctant to press aggressively for climate change measures at both the micro and macro levels. It is becoming increasingly difficult to get China, the European Union (EU) and even the US to fully and persistently cooperate on the matter even as they are some of the worst emitters.
In terms of air quality, the World Bank has reported that 16 out of the 20 most polluted cities in the world are in China, and the country is also the biggest greenhouse gas-emitter. Meanwhile, the EU operates the world’s largest carbon market.
To get China, the US and the EU to agree on a price for CO2, there needs to be a “market mechanism” to check and eventually eliminate the negative elements causing drastic changes to global climate.
“The data on the progress made in the area of climate change point to positives and negatives. For example, the rate of warming since the turn of the century has declined more than many experts and scientists had expected. This was after significant hikes in the 1980s and 1990s,” a prominent science journal noted.
Which brings us to the question — why were attempts to agree to a concerted plan of action to combat climate change such a failure at a UNsponsored conference in Copenhagen in 2009?
One answer seems preponderant. And, it was the disagreements “over the economic impact”. James Hansen, the world’s leading climate scientist commenting on the conference once said: “Any agreement would be deeply flawed, and it would be better to start from scratch. The whole approach (conference) is fundamentally wrong that its better to reassess the situation.”
He said one of his primary concerns was that relating to developing economies and the question of funding, a matter that remains deadlocked till this day.
Conferences and such like do have an impact, but very minimal, only because there remains severe disagreements between the developed and developing economies. Basically, such conferences are “bureaucratically organised” and therefore bureaucratically implemented, meaning taking as much time as possible.
Meanwhile, land are burning and the air is being polluted on an unimaginable scale. What happened at Copenhagen was the manufacture of a document — the Copenhagen Accord hammered out by a small group of countries that included the world’s two most biggest greenhouse gas polluters, the US and China.
In the end, the conference did not adopt the accord, but voted “to take note of it” meaning the Copenhagen Accord. However, it managed to achieve one minor feat which was that it “united the US, China and other major developing countries to curb global greenhouse gas emissions, something the Kyoto Protocol failed to do.
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