Save us from climate deniers
Are natural disasters happening more frequently or are we just hearing more about them because we live in a communication-saturated world? The World Economic Forum (WEF) says natural disasters have quadrupled globally since 1970. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) puts their cost at $1.5 trillion in damage between 2003 and 2013, with 1.1 million deaths and the lives of 2 billion people affected.
Various scientific studies point to an increase in the frequency and severity of natural disasters over the past three decades. Atlantic hurricanes and floods in India made 2017 the most costly year on record for severe weather events, the UN-affiliated World Meteorological Organization (WMO) reported.
Scientists believe climate change has been intensifying monsoon rains as rising sea surface temperatures in South Asia lead to more moisture in the atmosphere.
The “biblical catastrophe” caused by the wildfires in Greece, which have killed at least 70 people last week, might have been started by an arsonist. But wildfires were also raging in Russia, Norway, Finland and Sweden — the consequence of unusually hot, dry weather across much of Europe. Scientists see it as another sign of climate change.
The past three years were the hottest on record and heatwaves in Australia, unusual Arctic warmth and water shortages in Cape Town are extending harmful weather extremes in 2018, the UN warned in March.
Closer to home, we have seen an unprecedented heatwave in Japan kill at least 65 people, with some 22,000 others treated in hospital. Officially declared a natural disaster, it followed an earlier spell of torrential rain, floods and landslides that took 155 lives.
Laos, meanwhile, is just beginning the task of recovering from a catastrophic dam collapse last week. In addition to the 27 known dead and 131 missing as of Thursday, around 6,600 have been left homeless.
Are all these disasters a consequence of our energy hunger and material demand alone, or are some truly freaks of nature? Does climate change play any part? I believe so.
US President Donald Trump and his supporters can continue to declare that manmade global warming is a hoax if they want. How many more of his stupid tweets like this one can we expect: “It could be the COLDEST New Year’s Eve on record. Perhaps we could use a little bit of that good old Global Warming”.
Vox in June 2017 collected 115 tweets in which Mr Trump expressed scepticism about climate change — and that was only in the first six months since he took office.
What Mr Trump and his supporters should know is that there were 16 US natural disasters in 2017 that cost Americans more than $1 billion in damages, making it the costliest year on record.
Billy Fleming, research coordinator of the Ian L McHarg Center at the University of Pennsylvania School of Design, discussing increasing hurricane activity in the US with the World Economic Forum in February, had this to say. “Climate change isn’t just sea level rise; we know that we’re putting more energy into the atmosphere and as a result, we’re having more intense events.”
The WMO study has now confirmed that 2016 was the warmest year in records dating back to the 19th century, with 2017 and 2015 tied for second place in a warming trend the organisation blames on man-made emissions of greenhouse gases.
This is particularly bad news for people in the in the Arctic circle. Scientific American magazine reported in June last year that warmer temperatures were increasing thunderstorms over boreal forests and Arctic tundra, leading to more lighting and more fires.
Levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are now above 400 parts per million, far above natural variations in the past 800,000 years, and this is backing up mainstream scientific findings that mankind is the cause of global warming that has led to more natural calamities.
If this is not the time for all of us to reduce our carbon footprint, then when? The next generations will blame us for destroying the only planet that we have.
There are idiots out there who still believe that the world is flat and that Americans never landed on the moon. But they are harmless nuts compared with those in positions of power who deny that humans are contributing to environmentally hazardous activities and subsequent manmade disasters.
Surely the United States, which is the biggest contributor, needs to take another look at its policies and consider rejoining the Paris accord for the sake of the planet that it shares with all of us.