The Year the Great Migration Begins?

Over the past several years Europe has been struggling to deal with illegal migration out of Africa. Each year, tens of thousands of migrants, many from the sub-Saharan region, have been heading north hoping to reach the shores of Europe and a new life.

For the past month reports have been coming in from all over Africa suggesting that this year is going to be different, much different. Migrants in record numbers are said to have massed in northern Africa, waiting for an opportunity to get out.

Libya is reported to be inundated with two million migrants, at least half of whom hope to make their way to the UK. Now Yemen is pleading for international aid to help with legal and illegal migrants it claims have reached 800,000, many of them who have fled for their lives from wartorn homelands.

Mass migration has been forecast for some time and is expected to continue as wars spread and climate change and desertification make parts of southern African uninhabitable. This is going to present a huge challenge for the European Union countries which are examining their options, few of them very pleasant.

 

Global Warming Hasn’t Stopped

The latest scam from the global warming denialists is to claim that global warming has actually stopped. It’s over they say, keep moving, nothing to see here. In fact, what they’re doing is exploiting what’s called weather “noise” to distract attention to actual climate change.

Weather noise is the term used to describe the unpredictable variations in the earth’s weather that, looked at in short periods, can lead to false conclusions about climate change. Look at the red lines in the graph above. If you narrow your focus from one peak to the following trough you might conclude that, yes, the world is actually cooling. That’s weather noise. But look at the overall 30-year chart and you see the actual global warming. From Reuters:

Climate change is still nudging up temperatures in the long term even though the warmest year was back in 1998 and 2008 has begun with unusual weather such as a cool Pacific and Baghdad’s first snow in memory, experts said.

“Global warming has not stopped,” said Amir Delju, senior scientific coordinator of the World Meteorological Organization’s (WMO) climate program.

Last year was among the six warmest years since records began in the 1850s and the British Met Office said last week that 2008 will be the coolest year since 2000, partly because of a La Nina event that cuts water temperatures in the Pacific.

“We are in a minor La Nina period which shows a little cooling in the Pacific Ocean,” Delju told Reuters. “The decade from 1998 to 2007 is the warmest on record and the whole trend is still continuing.”

This year has started with odd weather including the first snows in Baghdad in memory on Friday and a New Year cold snap in India that killed more than 20 people. Frost hit some areas of Florida last week but orange groves escaped mostly unscathed.

Delju said climate change, blamed mainly on human emissions of greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels, would bring bigger swings in the weather alongside a warming trend that will mean more heatwaves, droughts, floods and rising seas.

“The more frequent occurrence of extreme events all over the world — floods in Australia, heavy snowfall in the Middle East — can also be signs of warming,” he said.

 

Oh Steve, Here’s A Tax You’re Going To Love!

The Globe & Mail reports that a federal advisory panel is going to recommend implementation of carbon taxes to fight global warming.

Carbon taxes aren’t a new idea but haven’t been widely adopted as yet. They work by making big emitters pay for the excessive CO2 they release into the atmosphere. When it comes to big emitters there’s none quite like Big Oil and the Athabasca Tar Sands.

Imagine making Big Oil (primarily American oil companies) paying big bucks for the big pollution they emit to produce ersatz petroleum (primarily for the American market). The very thought of it would leave Harper needing a change of pants.

Carbon taxes operate on the carrot and stick principle. Big, bad emiters get the stick – the taxes – while industries willing to adopt clean technologies get the carrot – financial incentives funded out of the taxes collected from the bad guys. It’s neat, it’s tidy and it’s effective – as effective as the political side is willing to make it.

 

US Shows Signs of Backing Away From Bali Deal

From the “it was bound to happen” file, Agence France-Presse reports the White House is already expressing “strong concerns” about the minimalist climate change deal reached at Bali.

As negotiators headed home after two weeks of intense haggling, the White House complained that the agreement did not do enough to commit major emerging economies such as China and India to big cuts in greenhouse gas emissions.

It underlined lingering division over how to confront the perils of global warming, which scientists warn will put millions of people at risk of hunger, homelessness and disease by the end of the century if temperatures keep rising at current rates.

An isolated US delegation had backed down during an unplanned 13th day of talks and said it would finally accept the deal, but hours later US President George W. Bush’s administration counter-attacked.

The White House said any Kyoto successor treaty must acknowledge a nation’s sovereign right to pursue economic growth and energy security.

While there were several positive aspects to the Bali deal, it added, the “United States does have serious concerns about other aspects of the decision as we begin the negotiations.”

The drama of Bali will be minor compared to the poker game when talks on a new treaty reach crunch point, said Fernando Tudela, Mexico’s under-secretary for environmental policy.
“The mother of all battles will be in 2009,” he cautioned. “This is just a warm-up.”

 

Leading Thinkers Speak Out on Bali Summit

The Guardian today features the views of a number of leading figures, each suggesting what will really boost the fight against climate change.

Kofi Annan:

They must sustain a two-pronged approach: mitigation and adaptation. The only suitable response is a binding international framework to curb greenhouse gas emissions beyond the Kyoto protocol, which expires in 2012. We have to take steps to increase the resilience of vulnerable communities to the impact of climate change.

Richard Branson:

The most positive but realistic thing that governments could agree in Bali is to halt the cutting down of virgin tropical rainforests with immediate effect and agree a method by which the major economies, big multinationals and other carbon offset groups could pay for it. The next five years of carbon emissions from burning rainforests will alone be greater than all the emissions from air travel since the Wright brothers first flight in 1903 until at least 2025.

Leon Feurth, Security Advisor to Vice-Pres. Al Gore:

The single breakthrough that would be a game-changer is technological: it would involve an efficient method for trapping carbon dioxide as it is generated, before it can enter the atmosphere. But even such a breakthrough would have to be coupled with a profound change of mind about relying on massive consumption of carbon-based fuels.

Isabel Hilton, Editor, Chinadialogue and Open Democracy:

The most important breakthrough – which must form the basis of action – would be acknowledgment that policy must follow science, however difficult that is. We must agree that concentrations of greenhouse gases should not be allowed to rise above 400-450 parts per million, CO2 equivalent. Few leaders have had the courage to make this commitment. Without it, we are plagued by shifting targets and lack of clarity.

George Monbiot – Columnist and Author of “Heat”

There should be an equal allocation, worldwide, of the right to produce carbon dioxide. Our rations can be tradeable – people may use more than their share if they are prepared to buy it – but the revenue should be returned to those who use less. This system works because it is just, easy to understand, requires very little policing, and creates powerful incentives to use low-carbon technologies.

Sir Nicholas Stern

We need a global agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, with the rich countries leading the way on targets and trading. The rich countries should aim for at least 80% – either made directly or bought via a global mechanism for trading emissions. Trade in emissions has the benefit of keeping costs down and providing glue for the global deal.

In reading these views and the others in the Guardian article, I thought about which of them was right. The simple fact is they all are.

 

UN Slams Harper

Stephen Harper may hope Canadians are dumb enough to believe he’s sincere in working for global warming solutions but he’s not fooling the folks at the United Nations.

Stevie’s been outed. From CanWest:

“Canada has a long history of global leadership on global atmospheric environmental issues, from acid rain to ozone depletion and climate change,” said the UN’s Human Development Report. “Maintaining this tradition will require tough decisions.”

The UN report said Canada could achieve greater reductions in carbon dioxide emissions than the goals set by the government, “but not with current policies.”

 

Too Hot for Sun Worshipers

China is deluged by rainstorms and floods. So are parts of Britain. What could be worse? Maybe it would be to be in sunny Greece, Italy or Southern France. Europe’s Mediterranean nations are facing the unthinkable – weather so hot it kills their tourism industry.

In Greece, temperatures have reached 43 C. in the shade, the hottest weather in over a century.

‘The Mediterranean climate of this country no longer exists. It is changing, perhaps even faster than we expected,’ said Michalis Petrakis, director of Greece’s Institute of Environmental Research at the National Observatory in Athens.

It’s the same story throughout most of the eastern Med. Forest fires are spreading throughout the region, wildlife is simply dying off.