Travelling by seaplane to Koyra, in the delta area of Bangladesh, was the equivalent of a journey some years into the future, when the devastating effects of climate change will be an accepted reality worldwide. We landed in an area still devastated by cyclone "Aila" which hit Bangladesh in 2009. A huge amount of once cultivated land was still under water, because of daily tidal fluctuations and the fact that some embankments had not been mended in the nearly two years since Aila.
I spoke to one woman, living with her husband and son in a tiny shack on a narrow embankment they shared with other families who all had to move there when their homes were destroyed. She looked much older than the mother of a seventeen-year-old, and had a resigned, desperate expression as she pointed to the flooded area where she had once had a decent home and small farm. "We are waiting" she said, "It is two years now, and nothing has happened. We cannot go home."
Together with my BRAC hosts, I was driven to meet local farmers and fishermen and women. BRAC has a big program in Koyra covering education, and advice on climate resilience to over a thousand villages, including training on how to adapt their livelihoods to cope with the brackish, salinated water that has covered their farmlands and traditional fresh water fishing.
We stopped at a large, recently cultivated area to speak with local farmers. They told me how they were growing maize for the first time, as it is able to grow on brackish land, and different varieties of rice which are salt tolerant. I was encouraged to ask questions, which when translated, were answered with a sense of pride. "Yes, we are glad to have new crops to plant. We can now feed our own families".
Further on, I watched a man standing waist-high in a fenced off area of salinated water. He was feeding fish to crabs to fatten them and getting a good economic return from selling the crabs. BRAC had helped to develop a market elsewhere for the crabs and explained that the local Muslims did not eat crab, so it was Hindus such as this farmer who had developed the crab fattening skills. Fortunately, this did not seem to cause any inter-religious tension.
Later I spoke with a group of women, who with their husbands had adapted their fishing skills away from traditional fresh water fishing to fishing for tilapia, a small salt tolerant fish. They had benefitted from training on how best to manage the fish stocks and ensure sustainability. Again, I was encouraged to ask questions, and like their male counterparts the women were happy to discuss the way they had had to adapt to changing environmental conditions. Yes, they liked the fish to eat, and now they were beginning to have a small income again.
As we drove, I noted similar projects for families living on embankments which were supported by other NGOs, and I was shown some latrines provided by Concern. There were women working to build smaller "bolders" as the embankments are called, and men carrying heavy stones on their heads to help construct a roadway into more flooded parts, all work schemes for local people.
However, I was struck by the absence of effective local authority planning and action. When I raised this with a local authority official, who had been invited to join BRAC colleagues at their local center for a working lunch, he shrugged his shoulders at the immensity of the task and referred to the lack of local authority resources. Bangladesh is a least developed country (LDC) which has become the leading LDC negotiator on climate change issues. Its contribution to the problem of green house gas emissions is negligible, but the additional burden of climate change is already being felt. Officials in Dhaka predict that 20 million people may have to leave this region if the global temperature increases by more than 2° Celsius and sea levels rise as predicted. There is nothing theoretical about the climate change issue from this local viewpoint. The injustice of a poor LDC country having to bear huge additional costs from climate impacts it did not contribute to is self evident.
A memorable stop on my visit was to a local primary school run by BRAC. It was organized on the same principles as a BRAC school I had visited the day before in Korail slum, the largest slum in Dhaka. The schools have 30 plus pupils and one teacher, who teaches these children the five year curriculum in four years, through intensive participation and teacher commitment. These are boys and girls who would not otherwise go to school, and their ages differed as a result. I was struck about how enabling the atmosphere was in both the slum school and the local school, full of creativity and a sense of enjoyment of the work and play. In the school in Koyra the children enacted with great gusto -- and acting skills -- how climate change may happen. One of the taller boys acted as the tree which the others cut down, even though warned not to. The winds came, and the consequences were played out -- they all knew where the climate shelter was! As I watched with a grandmother's eye, it struck me that every primary school around the world should be beginning to bring home to children what we must all do to change our habits. Every school needs to be a "green school", so that children can educate their parents. For some it will be knowing where the nearest climate shelter is. For others -- in the developed world -- it will be learning to reuse, reduce, recycle, eat less meat, and travel by public transport, among other ideas.
I watched representatives of two villages receiving disaster preparedness training provided by BRAC. The main method of instruction was to form small groups who discussed together, and then acted out their response to an early warning of the danger from cyclone or sea surge. What they were learning about disaster risk reduction will become ever more important as climate change aggravates the risk.
We took another small trip in our seaplane, to the immense excitement and pleasure of the crowds of children and villagers who saw us off and a similar group crowded around when we landed again in the water 10 kilometers away! This time I was shown two different types of climate resilient houses developed by the architectural department of BRAC University. The approach to the design was participatory -- amongst architects and engineers, home owners, carpenters and masons, to arrive at a combination of skills where the knowledge of each of the participants was optimized. The first "test" house was on concrete stilts, made of local wood and roofed by local tiling. It looked distinctive as we approached by boat, and sturdy. But it was also quite costly for local people. The other "test" house was constructed entirely from local affordable materials, on the theory that if it was destroyed in a particularly bad cyclone or tidal surge, it could be rebuilt relatively easily. The locals seemed divided on which house they preferred but the younger women I asked opted for the house on stilts.
The journey back to Dhaka in our seaplane took 50 minutes. I was told the journey could take from 36 to 40 hours by road. I was not the only passenger who nodded off en route, and as I did, I was thinking of the resilience of the local people I had met. I was struck by their sense of pride in learning to adapt to worsening environmental conditions, and the admirable way in which BRAC empowers communities in all aspects of its work.
I would hope that even the most dyed-in-the-wool denialist would admit the _possibility_ that the the overwhelming majority of climate scientists _could_ be right in their assertion that climate change will become a serious problem unless we stop putting as much CO2 into the air.
Now, even the _first_ reason above would be an excellent one for working hard to decrease our reliance on fossil fuels. Add to it the _possibility_ that excess CO2 could create major problems, and the case would seem compelling that we should try hard to come up with alternatives.
The mindless, ideologically-driven frenzy of these denialist "creatures-who-live-under-bridges" is really depressing. Often wrong, never in doubt.
I'm a scientist, and I work in a field with many overlaps with climatology (astrophysics). I think there's major cause for concern, based on actually knowing the physics involved. I can be completely independent -- I work on stars. You, on the other hand, appear to be ideologically driven.
http://www.globalmontreal.com/technology/Northern+Brunswick+wind+turbines+frozen+solid/4286952/story.html
Certainly we can expect a collapse of civilisations, and billions of deaths.
Given we've been around about only 4 million years, we evolved in the WORST climate condition possible - low CO2 AND low temperature, (only happened once before ~300MYA). That stress may be in fact why we evolved to be more intelligent than other animals; making tools and using fire was likely the only way we could have survived through ice ages. Living in warm times is easy, it's the ice ages that bring death.
Plants like THREE things - warmth, water and... plenty of CO2. The Devonian and Carboniferous periods proves that beyond any doubt, that's when land plants got going and sucked most of the CO2 away.
http://geocraft.com/WVFossils/PageMill_Images/image277.gif
And maybe for "mary darlin'. the "it" she wants is for less of us to not fare well, for less of us to suffer and die and watch our parents and brothers and sisters do so.
Is there something wrong with that? Why would you spend your energy attacking what is obviously so noble?
Human contribution to more-intense precipitation extremes
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v470/n7334/full/nature09763.html
Anthropogenic greenhouse gas contribution to flood risk in England and Wales in autumn 2000
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v470/n7334/full/nature09762.html
Bangladesh is part of a much larger area that was once under water and will be under water some day again. Climate change occurs at fairly predictable frequencies and has done so since the world began. It will continue to happen until the earth is no longer. But the current residents need to be acclimated to the changing circumstances.
Many climate changes from history are completely different to these, and several times wiped out the majority of species worldwide. These climate changes occur particularly quickly, and are accompanied by devastating side effects like the acidification of the seas.
The current climate change has absolutely nothing to do with the predictable frequence climate changes you are talking about. It is happening extremely fast, and given the huge human population of the world, there will be little ability to adapt by migration.
The human species is now in severe danger of extinction. That danger is made so much worse by the wrecking attempts of people such as yourself, who do not have the most basic understanding of the concepts involved.
Look how fast is warmed from the late 1500's to the early 1600's.
There's ZERO evidence that anything happening now is unprecedented either in magnitude or in rate of change.
Two studies, both published in Nature, are among the first to draw a straight line between climate change and its impact on potentially deadly and damaging extreme weather events.
Australia, Sri Lanka, Brazil and Pakistan have all been recently ravaged by massive flooding, raising questions as to whether global warming was at least partly to blame.
Computer models have long predicted that the observed rise in atmospheric greenhouse gases would magnify rainfall.
Up to now, the link has been largely theoretical. This paper provides the first specific evidence that this is indeed the case.
To attack climate change effectively requires a few Black Swans that can cost-competitively supersede fossil fuels faster than conventional wisdom suggests is possible.
They seem to have begun to emerge in the energy arena. See Green Light and "Cold Fusion" at www.aesopinstitute.org for an overview and a strategy that might minimize political opposition to what needs to be done to accelerate wise action.
There is no such assertion in the above piece. The article mentions an inundation that has gone on for almost two years. The article does however point out that Bangladesh is specially vulnerable to the early effects of climate change, just because it was already vulnerable to inundation. What they are seeing there now are the impacts of increased sea level.
The sea levels are rising, as was forecast - and that is a simple measured and observed fact. By the end ot the 20th century they had reached 3.3mm rise per year.
"the sea is rising....the sea is rising...the sea is rising."
3.1 mm/year - BFD! That's only about one foot per CENTURY. Coastal regions are EASILY able to keep up with rising sea level.
http://www.breedshill.org/map%20overlay%202.%20psd%20copy.jpg
The Maldives are also a bad example - no sea encroachment is occurring at all and it survived a period when sea level was 50 to 60 CM higher than today.
Want to see the actual land area at risk if sea level took off per the worst alarmist claims? http://www.globalwarmingart.com/images/2/2c/Global_Sea_Level_Rise_Risks.png
Given that a large portion of the world's population lives along the coast areas that is a lot of relatively densely populated area.
The article presupposes the existence of scientific evidence that supports AGW. This evidence is vast, and uncontested scientifically. Instead, your side just pretend that it doesn't exist, or lie about it.
"As it happens, the project's initial findings, published last month, show no evidence of an intensifying weather trend. "In the climate models, the extremes get more extreme as we move into a doubled CO2 world in 100 years," atmospheric scientist Gilbert Compo, one of the researchers on the project, tells me from his office at the University of Colorado, Boulder. "So we were surprised that none of the three major indices of climate variability that we used show a trend of increased circulation going back to 1871.""
In other words, researchers have yet to find evidence of more-extreme weather patterns over the period, contrary to what the models predict. "There's no data-driven answer yet to the question of how human activity has affected extreme weather," adds Roger Pielke Jr., another University of Colorado climate researcher.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704422204576130300992126630.html
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704422204576130300992126630.html
None of the climate science or scientists has ever said what you claim. Unfortunately the climate scientists have the evidence, and are extraordinarily accurate with their predictions. What the denier side has is a monopoly on lies and stupidity.
This is a poor country, and they are being flooded by the sea through no fault of their own. Do you propose that the rich countries, which caused the ice to melt and seas to rise, do something to help them enact this industrial development?
However as science deniers sites have you SecondTime convinced that the Moon violates the Laws of Physics I can see how you'd be confused here as well.
Is the following wording less confusing for you?
Rising ocean levels leads to flooding in coastal regions, and will lead to more flooding in coastal regions in the future.
Again as you SecondTime maintain that the Moon violates the Laws of Physics I understand your confusion.
ECOPOLITICS EXAMINER
that would be CC (Contradictory Climate).
9.4. Thermal Stress (Heat Waves, Cold Spells) 9.4.1. Heat Waves
Global climate change is likely to be accompanied by an increase in the frequency and intensity of heat waves, as well as warmer summers and milder winters (see Table 3-10).
http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/tar/wg2/index.php?idp=353
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National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration:
"The combined global land and ocean average surface temperature for December 2009 - February 2010 was the fifth warmest on record for the season"
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/2010/2