Humanitarian disaster blamed on climate change

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Humanitarian disaster blamed on climate change
OP - March 01, 2013, 08:26 PM

This is bound to result in some interesting legal conundrums, as well as making some people even more interested in denying AGW.

Humanitarian disaster blamed on climate change

Quote
For the first time, we have proof that climate change has led to a humanitarian disaster. The East African drought of 2011, which resulted in a famine that killed at least 50,000 people, was partly caused by human emissions of greenhouse gases.

The drought was brought about by the failure of two consecutive rainy seasons: the "short rains" in late 2010 and the "long rains" at the start of 2011. Climatologist Peter Stott of the Met Office Hadley Centre in Exeter, UK, and his colleagues ran climate models, with and without a human influence on climate, and compared the likelihood of the rains failing.

Humanity's activities had no effect on the short rains – they failed because of a strong La Niña in the Pacific. "That's natural," says Stott.

But climate change did affect the long rains, making them more likely to fail (Geophysical Research Letters, doi.org/kmv). The model could only reproduce the scale of the drought if it included greenhouse gas emissions.

<snip>

The team calculate that climate change is responsible for between 24 per cent and 99 per cent of the risk of long rains failure.

"No food crisis can ever be attributed to a single causal factor," says Tracy Carty of Oxfam in Oxford, UK. "However, drought is always a trigger and this is the first occasion that a portion of the blame has been attributed to climate change."

"Climate change is not a distant future threat, but already a driver behind rising humanitarian needs," she adds.

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Humanitarian disaster blamed on climate change
Reply #1 - March 02, 2013, 07:56 AM

I don't see this study getting anywhere.

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Humanitarian disaster blamed on climate change
Reply #2 - March 04, 2013, 01:04 PM

Given how controversial and polarised the whole subject of AGW is I don't really feel confident in believing anything that comes out to do with it. It's the same old stuff all the time, to the point where any warnings associated with AGW just seem to be another instance of the 'the boy who cried wolf'.
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Humanitarian disaster blamed on climate change
Reply #3 - March 04, 2013, 05:54 PM

I have an agnostic position about human caused global warming.

Regardless, reducing pollution is still a good goal that most likely trumps any economic argument against it, in the long run: pollution is dangerous for our existence whether it also warms up the globe as a side effect or not.

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Humanitarian disaster blamed on climate change
Reply #4 - March 04, 2013, 06:44 PM

Quote from: asbie on March 02, 2013, 07:56 AM
I don't see this study getting anywhere.

Not while there is still oil in the ground.

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Humanitarian disaster blamed on climate change
Reply #5 - March 04, 2013, 06:51 PM

The earth has been going to climate shifts through it's history. The main problem now is that it is only speculation that human activity has increased the speed of this currently. The time scale to test it is far too short. It is one of those thing where only time will tell. However the governments should be prepared for the possibility of drastic climate change and how to adapt to it.
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Humanitarian disaster blamed on climate change
Reply #6 - March 04, 2013, 08:04 PM

I think the saddest part is that climate change seems to effect countries that are less likely to cope with it.

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Humanitarian disaster blamed on climate change
Reply #7 - March 04, 2013, 09:39 PM

Fascinating how the deniers have shaped this topic, so that the sceptical position is to doubt the science. I have a twenty year old book by the IPCC that says all the stuff we are now seeing.

Get a telescope and look at Venus.

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