Global Warning = Drought & Deserts
October 4th, 2006
The Independent has yet another article on the fate befaling the world if global warming isn’t stopped, like, right now. A team of British scientists predicts that drought will likely sweep much of the earth:
The study, by Eleanor Burke and two Hadley Centre colleagues, models how a measure of drought known as the Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI) is likely to increase globally during the coming century with predicted changes in rainfall and heat around the world because of climate change. It shows the PDSI figure for moderate drought, currently at 25 per cent of the Earth’s surface, rising to 50 per cent by 2100, the figure for severe drought, currently at about 8 per cent, rising to 40 cent, and the figure for extreme drought, currently 3 per cent, rising to 30 per cent.
Like good scientists, the study authors do warn of limitations in their study:
Senior Met Office scientists are sensitive about the study, funded by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, stressing it contains uncertainties: there is only one climate model involved, one future scenario for emissions of greenhouse gases (a moderate-to-high one) and one drought index. Nevertheless, the result is “significant”, according to Vicky Pope, the head of the Hadley Centre’s climate programme. Further work would now be taking place to try to assess the potential risk of different levels of drought in different places, she said.
What does this mean for the world’s people?
“We’re talking about 30 per cent of the world’s land surface becoming essentially uninhabitable in terms of agricultural production in the space of a few decades,” Mark Lynas, the author of High Tide, the first major account of the visible effects of global warming around the world, said. “These are parts of the world where hundreds of millions of people will no longer be able to feed themselves.”
Mr Pendleton said: “This means you’re talking about any form of development going straight out of the window. The vast majority of poor people in the developing world are small-scale farmers who… rely on rain.”
The poorest areas of world, especially Africa, will be the hardest hit.
Though the article doesn’t discuss effects on the developed world, one can only wonder what would happen to the world if the US midwest and/or California became desert.
This study is yet another piece of evidence suggesting the world had better act now or else prepare for the loss of tens of millions, or more, people. It sounds strident, but I believe that we may be experiencing the last century of human civilization as we know it.
I wish I knew how to bring about change, but the tendency toward denial and delay is extraordinarily powerful. My fellow psychoanalysts and psychologists should help address this issue, and some do. But all too many among them are themselves absorbed by the pull of the immediate. It doesn’t appear that psychoanalysis helps people to be forward looking. Too bad.
Entry Filed under: Environment, Gobal Warming, Politics, Psychoanalysis, Psychology, Science, Social Issues
3 Comments Add your own
1. Jagadeesh | October 6th, 2006 at 10:57 am
We were discussing the world after cold world war. A very interesting fact came up. The countries globally seem to be finding a new enemy all the time. This is causing a war almost once a decade with cold war the rest of the time.
My question is: Are civilization right from primitive ages, always looked at external threat to feel secured? If suddenly they find none, there is invariably a civil war or something to that effect? Can you please shed some light on this and respond to my mail id?
2. John Caley | October 16th, 2006 at 6:19 pm
Hi
That report is in my opinion an underestimate.
The problem is one of seeing what is happening but not fingering the cause.
High CO2 levels would make a hotter and wetter world.
However what will happen is a hotter dryer world.
Is the problem just CO2 ?
NO, underlying all this is a micro-layer of petroleum oil that has covered the surface of the world’s seas.
This oil-layer inhibits water evaporation, so low level clouds are diminished and rain becomes an extinct species.
Consequently the world will dry out, faster and more completely than anyone would have thought.
From then on, what happens is up to the maturity of governments.
3. sushil_yadav | October 22nd, 2006 at 12:37 pm
The link between Mind and Social / Environmental-Issues.
The fast-paced, consumerist lifestyle of Industrial Society is causing exponential rise in psychological problems besides destroying the environment. All issues are interlinked. Our Minds cannot be peaceful when attention-spans are down to nanoseconds, microseconds and milliseconds. Our Minds cannot be peaceful if we destroy Nature.
Industrial Society Destroys Mind and Environment.
Subject : In a fast society slow emotions become extinct.
Subject : A thinking mind cannot feel.
Subject : Scientific/ Industrial/ Financial thinking destroys the planet.
Subject : Environment can never be saved as long as cities exist.
Emotion is what we experience during gaps in our thinking.
If there are no gaps there is no emotion.
Today people are thinking all the time and are mistaking thought (words/ language) for emotion.
When society switches-over from physical work (agriculture) to mental work (scientific/ industrial/ financial/ fast visuals/ fast words ) the speed of thinking keeps on accelerating and the gaps between thinking go on decreasing.
There comes a time when there are almost no gaps.
People become incapable of experiencing/ tolerating gaps.
Emotion ends.
Man becomes machine.
A society that speeds up mentally experiences every mental slowing-down as Depression / Anxiety.
A ( travelling )society that speeds up physically experiences every physical slowing-down as Depression / Anxiety.
A society that entertains itself daily experiences every non-entertaining moment as Depression / Anxiety.
FAST VISUALS /WORDS MAKE SLOW EMOTIONS EXTINCT.
SCIENTIFIC /INDUSTRIAL /FINANCIAL THINKING DESTROYS EMOTIONAL CIRCUITS.
A FAST (LARGE) SOCIETY CANNOT FEEL PAIN / REMORSE / EMPATHY.
A FAST (LARGE) SOCIETY WILL ALWAYS BE CRUEL TO ANIMALS/ TREES/ AIR/ WATER/ LAND AND TO ITSELF.
To read the complete article please follow either of these links :
PlanetSave
EarthNewsWire
sushil_yadav
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