Is It Getting Warmer?

BBC - November 9, 2007

This is a heart wrenching article that should cause everyone to feel sad. Whether you believe that global warming is real or not or if it is caused by humans, really doesn’t matter when you read this article. It is obvious that these people are suffering due to the current weather trend in their part of the world.

Efforts to help developing nations adapt to the impacts of climate change have been called “woefully inadequate” by a UN-commissioned report.

The report, called Beyond Scarcity: Power, Poverty and the Global Water Crisis, says climate change “now poses what may be an unparalleled threat to human development”.

There is a lot of evidence that the droughts in the Horn of Africa this year are connected to climate change. This is not an issue for 50 years down the road, it is an issue for today.

• agriculture and rural development will bear the brunt of climate risk
• extreme poverty and malnutrition will increase as water insecurity increases
• more extreme weather patterns will increase the risk of floods and droughts
• shrinking glaciers and rising sea levels will reduce access to fresh water

Because industrialised nations have focused their climate change initiatives on reducing the amount of greenhouse gases being pumped into the atmosphere, support for adaptation in developing countries has been “piecemeal and fragmented”, the report says.

Funding… under the Kyoto Protocol currently amounts to $20m annually; so this is something that, as part of the multilateral negotiations, has not had any weight attached to it.

…one of the potentially biggest set-backs to human development in Africa in the past 100 years or more.

You can read this very moving article here.

Popularity: 8% [?]

Filed under: Getting warmer, Greenhouse gas, Human fault

Similar articles that you may enjoy:

• Bill ties climate to national security
• How Global Warming Works
• Global Warming: Scientists Warn It May Be Too Late To Save The Ice Caps
• Warming Called a National Security Issue
• Scientists unite to push Bush on climate
• China accepts fears over climate – but will not cut growth
• Politicians sign new climate pact
• Africa: Live Earth Vs. Africa
• Schwarzenegger urges U.N. to move on climate change
• 13 years to turn round global warming
• In China, a Plan to Turn Rice Into Carbon Credits
• Top 10 ‘Global-Warming’ Myths
• The truth about global warming
• Global warming may spur wind shear, sap hurricanes
• Marx Would Have Loved Kyoto