Take a pinch of salt, stir in speculation, and pluck figures from thin air. Simmer with press releases escaping. Voila! alarmism, without a shred of evidence, justsetting out how the future will shape itself:
Climate change could cause global conflicts as large as the two world wars but lasting for centuries unless the problem is controlled, a leading defence think tank has warned.
The Royal United Services Institute said a tenfold increase in energy research spending to around £10 billion a year would be needed if the world were to avoid the worst effects of changing temperatures.
However the group said that the response to threats posed by climate change, such as rising sea levels and migration, had so far been “slow and inadequate,” because nations had failed to prepare for the worst-case scenario.
The source of the report is Nick Mabey, a former senior member of the Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit, and has an unsurprising background in environmental charities, non-governmental organisations, and think-tanks. He has contributed to the economic study of global warming and its transmutation into the agitprop term, ‘climate change’. His article adops a certain tone….
Food riots in Mexico City, environmental outrage from Osama bin Laden and Russian territorial claims in the Arctic: the past year has seen climate change emerge as a serious issue across the security agenda, from the abstraction of discussions in the UN Security Council to the brutal reality of drought-driven conflict in Africa. These are just the first signs of how climate change – and our responses to it – will fundamentally change the strategic security context in the coming decades.
Climate change is already creating hard security threats, but it has no hard security solutions. Climate change is like a ticking clock: every increase in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere permanently alters the climate, and we can never move the hands back to reclaim the past. Even if we stopped emitting pollution tomorrow, the world is already committed to levels of climate change unseen for hundreds of thousands of years. If we fail to stop polluting, we will be committed to catastrophic and irreversible changes over the next century, which will directly displace hundreds of millions of people and critically undermine the livelihoods of billions. There is some scientific uncertainty over these impacts, but it is over when they will occur not if they will occur – unless climate change is slowed. Preventing catastrophic and runaway climate change will require a global mobilisation of effort and co-operation seldom seen in peacetime.
Not so much economics as prophecy. Uncertainty of outcome is downplayed and the effects are asserted as fact, although Mabey would be the first to see the future since Christ or Nostradamus.
Here’s something new to worry about- Sun Spots! An item in today’s ‘The Australian’, by a Mr. Chapman, points out that the sun has fewer sunspots last year than predicted, and that such lack of spots usually means a cold year ahead. He claims that the average trend for the past decade has been a cooling one, and he thinks that we may be at the start of the old bogey, the next Ice Age!
So do ask your governments to plan for BOTH contingencies- Flooding or Frosting! That should keep them busy!
Mabey should be working for the BBC. They are masters at turning inconclusive facts into a scare story. Monday’s panorama featured a ‘fumes in aircraft’ scare. This will be a stick to beat the aircraft industry I said, and sure enough it was all the fault of wicked capitalists trying to kill us for profit. No serious casualties of course. Just a group of (probably gold digging passengers in America who said they felt ill after a flight. Ask the BBC to investigate, say, increase meningitis deaths in young children who attend day care and they wouldn’t touch it. Day care is ‘good’ it, it is not run by ‘business’ and it helps to undermine the family.
Is he the son of, or a relation of a man called “Richard Mabey”, who wrote about 35 years ago a very good book called “food for free”, but later went mad (that is to say, left wing) and started advocating everybody eating what he called “roadkill”, instead of going to the butcher’s?
“environmental outrage from Osama bin Laden”
Huh?
When did that happen, then?
Normal people hear news reports about reports like this and assume there must be something to it or else why all the news reports. Wierdos like me who actually read what was said, find stuff like this:
Huh? How are these are anything to do with climate change? No-one has even *measured* any climate change and already it’s “creating hard security threats”? I’m constantly amazed at how these loonies have any influence.
The food riots in Mexico happened as a result of corn being diverted to ethanol production rather than food production. And as we all know, ethanol and biofuels will save us from global warming. It’s just too bad that the Mexicans are unwilling to sacrifice a few meals in order to save us all from global warming. How greedy and heartless. Someone should chastise them. I nominate the UN.
I’d like to make note of the verbal judo the lefties are now engaging in. The term “global warming” isn’t used in these scaremonger articles, and “global climate change” has taken its place. This gives the left much more room to maneuver when blaming humans for all climate change….”More snowfall in Chicago this year? Anthropogenic climate change!” “Polar ice caps melting? AGC!” etc.
If you control the language, you control the debate….
Look, we are going to fry or not. You don’t have to believe in Global Warming to do something about it. I am a social scientist – I believe in wonky science. But even if we don’t know all the facts yet – do we really want to take the chance of doing nothing? I’ll play it safe thanks. But what about a few ideas on what to do if it heats up beyond what we can handle? Can something like the polar cities idea work? http://angryafrican.net/2008/04/09/heating-up-time-to-worry/
Because in the past centuries we had no conflicts, and all was quiet and peaceful, but now we’re gonna have conflicts caused by climate change…
It’s a safe bet, there are going to be conflicts… then they’ll say: we told you so, see, climate change is proved !
It’s appalling to see all these people (doom prophets)going crazy… maybe it’s because of climate change….
But even if we don’t know all the facts yet – do we really want to take the chance of doing nothing?
Absolutely! The economic and social costs of doing “something” merely for the sake of doing something, without any certainty that it will have any effect, are enormous. Spending gazillions of dollars and destroying economies just to make you and your ilk feel better is insane. You’re probably the same type of person who is responsible for killing nuclear power industry in the US. Personally, I don’t care if you and other chicken littles are concerned that the sky is falling; take your medication and hide under the bed.
Good point Angry African !
Now, remind me again, are we going to freeze or fry? We really need to know because presumably just what we are going to do will be conditioned by which particular doom we will be suffering.
I won’t go into the irony that someone who ‘believes in wonky’ science can, in the same paragraph, demand that ‘he will play it safe’ without knowing what the hell needs to be done. I desist because a huge swathe of hard science academia seem to be suffering from the same psychosis. It hardly seems fair to hold social scientists to the same standards.
In parting, I don’t think that there will be much disagreement with me when I say that prosperous nations are going to be in the best position to weather WHATEVER changes in climate afflict them, so it behooves us (the developed world) to concentrate on a process that is somewhat better understood than climate change science – wealth creation.
Because in the past centuries we had no conflicts, and all was quiet and peaceful
That’s correct. Much the same way that the first hurricane was in 1990 and the first heatwave just before.
In actual fact, historical records indicate that nothing much bad happened before about 1700. Since then it’s all been down hill.
As to this 200 years of war that these dorks fantasise about-
What do they invisage us using?
Pugil sticks?
We have atomic weapons and F16’s
They will have rocks and sharpened sticks.
I cant see any serious conflict lasting more than ten minutes can you?
I haven’t read the full report, but I presume that since anyone who looks at the figures will know that the Kyoto agreement will do bugger all to affect the climate in the next hundred years, and the chances of any new carbon reducing agreement involving the likes of China and India being signed, let alone adhered to, are nil, then what this report must recommend is a reversal of the planned decline in our armed forces and indeed a huge increase in our force projection ability.
At the very least, it must recommend planning now to establish a beachead in Calais to secure the continental end of the Channel tunnel so we can either seal it off against the hordes of starving continentals trying to conquer our green and pleasant land, or rush through the tunnel and secure new farmland and water supplies.
This is going to take a lot of sea-lift capability and a much bigger navy to protect it, as well as a greatly increased air lift capacity and the planes to protect that.
Our Army must not only be expanded, but equipped with all the latest in armoured vehicles and personal protection, in case we get sued by angry mums, and it better be the best trained army we’ve ever had.
Sadly, we will also have to expand our nuclear deterent forces as well.
The good thing about these precautions is that they will work whatever way the climate changes, whether we need to keep the ravenning foriegners at bay or wether we need to expand our living room.
Shame that we won’t be able to afford our Kyoto commitments since we will have to ramp up our industrial base to build and pay for this army, but you can’t have everything.
There is a reference to Al-Qaeda talking about global warming here:
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3534715,00.html
I remember seeing an earlier story about similar comments a few weeks back. Like the left, they see it as a means of attacking the Great Satan. I’m not clear as to why we should make policy based on Al-Qaeda’s analysis of the global situation.
Don’t bother leaving a comment for Mr Mabey. I left a restrained comment under my real name but it doesn’t appear to have survived the moderation process. Moderation, I suspect is a euphemism for filtering negative comments.
In most cases where the knowledge is inadequate (and in climate its very basic and all prognoses are religious prophecy and not science) its better not to do anything. We are already seeing the results of a virtual problem (useless computer models predicting climate “disaster”) being made into a real one (food shortages resulting from turning land use from food production to “carbon recycling fuel production”) by foolish governments trying to be seen to be “DOING SOMETHING”.
The real tragedy is that already we are seeing the “climate change” being blamed for the shortage of food rather than the seing that the real cause is the ludicrous attempts of carbon dioxide mitigation. So blind are the religious zealots that they do not see that the problems are of their own making. Contrasting to the middle ages, when the climate got dramatically colder precipitating the waves of witch hunts in order to find scapegoats for the global and individual misfortunes resulting, today we have the witchunts causing the crises.
The Russians are probably making claims in the Arctic in anticipation of the ice not being there, so they can send in their ships for oil exploration.
Has anyone else noticed the flexibility of these statements? ‘climate change COULD…’, etc. Lots of things COULD happen, but how much will you bet that they WOULD happen?
The ideal solution is simply to ban water. It gets you coming and going. It will either cause flooding, or crush you to death as ice, and have you seen what it does to metals? Rust, rust, rust! I’ll leave you to rust in peace.
Angry African,
It’s not do nowt or do summat. We always do something. It’s doing the right thing that counts. Your analysis is shonky.
DocBud,
And of course Al Queda have a fucking massive fluid dynamics simulation running in a cave in Pakistan.
Yeah and bin Laden is sitting there stroking a Persian cat in a Mao jacket.
I do though recall reading a laundry list of AQ beefs with the US which did mention the KYOTO protocols (sic). They seemed to think it was an acronym and not a city in Japan.
This has jumped the bastarding blue whale.