Climate change, drought and civil war

In a column entitled "Extended Forecast: Bloodshed", Nicholas Kristof discusses how the failure to confront global warming and climate change results in internal violence and civil war in effected countries and regions of the world.

He sites research that suggests a drought in one year will increase by an amazing 50% the chance of an African country slipping into civil war the next!

He writes:

As we pump out greenhouse gases, most of the discussion focuses on direct consequences like rising seas or aggravated hurricanes. But the indirect social and political impact in poor countries may be even more far-reaching, including upheavals and civil wars...

The point is that climate change will have consequences that will be difficult to foresee but will go far beyond weather or economics. There is abundant evidence that economic stress and crop failures — as climate scientists anticipate in poor countries — can lead to violence and upheavals.

In the United States, for example, some historians have found correlations between recessions or declines in farm values and increased lynchings of blacks.

Paul Collier, an Oxford University expert on global poverty, found that economic stagnation in poor countries leads to a rising risk of civil war. Professor Collier warns that climate change is likely to reduce rainfall in southern Africa enough that corn will no longer be a viable crop there. Since corn is a major form of sustenance in that region, the result may be catastrophic food shortages — and civil conflict.

The area that may be hardest hit of all — aside from islands that disappear beneath the waves — is the fragile Sahel region south of the Sahara Desert in West Africa. The Sahel is already impoverished and torn by religious and ethnic tensions, and reduced rainfall could push the region into warfare.

"The poorest people on Earth are in the Sahel, barely eking out an existence, and climate change pushes them over the edge,” Professor Miguel said. “It’s totally unfair.”

His research suggests that a drought one year increases by 50 percent the risk that an African country will slip into civil war the next year.

Ethnic conflict in Darfur was exacerbated by drought and competition for water, and some experts see it as the first war caused by climate change. That’s too simplistic, for the crucial factor was simply the ruthlessness of the Sudanese government, but climate change may well have been a contributing factor.

In a forthcoming book, “Economic Gangsters,” Mr. Miguel calls for a new system of emergency aid for countries suffering unusual drought or similar economic shocks. Such temporary aid would aim to reduce the risk of warfare that, once it has begun, is enormously costly to stop and often damages neighboring countries as well.

The greenhouse gases that imperil Africa’s future are spewing from the United States, China and Europe. The people in Bangladesh and Africa emit almost no carbon, yet they are the ones who will bear the greatest risks of climate change. Some experts believe that the damage that the West does to poor countries from carbon emissions exceeds the benefit from aid programs.
All this makes the United States’ reluctance to confront climate change in a serious way — like a carbon tax to replace the payroll tax, coupled with global leadership on the issue — as unjust as it is unfortunate.

Mabel Wong's anecdotel evidence

In the Journal Sentinel's Quick Hit (12/20/2008), Mabel Wong warns that: "Anecdotal observations from laymen..." regarding global warming "...don't prove anything."

She, of course, is right about this.

But then Ms Wong provides us with nothing less than anecdotal evidence!

The obvious purpose is to undermine the international scientific community's consensus that global warming is a real threat that demands immediate and decisive action.

Common Mabel. You can't have it both ways!

Science manipulated to serve ideology!

Last week Dr. Carmona, the United States Surgeon General from 2002-2006, testified that the Bush administration had ordered him to mention President Bush's name three times on every page of every speech he delivered.

He was also instructed to withhold reports on important scientific and health issues ranging from stem cells, emergency contraception, sex education, or prison, mental and global health issues because the findings challenged Bush administration's policies.

White House officials even forced Carmona to delay for years and attempted to “water down” a landmark report on the dangers of secondhand tobacco smoke.

The political censure of Dr. Carmona's scientific work was not an aberration.

The Bush administration has consistently manipulated scientific data to serve its ideology and protect the interests of its political supporters.

In 2003 more than 60 influential scientists, including 20 Nobel laureates, issued a statement asserting that the administration had systematically distorted scientific fact in the service of policy goals on the environment, health, biomedical research and nuclear weaponry at home and abroad.

During President Bush's first six years in office, he denied the reality of global warming, asserting that the science was not conclusive. NASA scientists and several officials at NASA headquarters and at two agency research centers reported that news releases on new global warming studies were revised by political appointees with no scientific background to play down definitiveness or risks. Remarkably, the science of global warming became conclusive after the democratic congressional victories in November 2006!

Ideological commitment and loyalty to the administration have driven policy in other areas as well. The White House made a commitment to a pro-life position on abortion and abstinence education the criteria for selecting officials to lead Iraq's reconstruction. At least seven Attorney Generals were fired for refusing to engage in overtly partisan political activity designed to help Republican candidates win elections.

This week we learned that another Bush appointee, Julie A. MacDonald, the former deputy assistant secretary for fish and wildlife and parks, had browbeat department biologists and habitat specialists and overruled their recommendations to protect a variety of rare and threatened species. She also violated federal rules by giving government documents to lobbyists for industries who had financial interests opposed to protecting wildlife and its habitat.

The Bush administration professes to abhor the heavy hand of government. Yet these apostles of laizze faire have consistently used the iron fist of the state to manipulate and suppress science. The White House has had a disciplined commitment to serving the extractive industries (gas, oil, timber and coal) and its campaign contributors, many of whom come from these very sectors. It has elevated short term economic goals over the long term health and welfare of the American people. In the process the current administration has undermined this nation's position of scientific and moral leadership in the world.