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Earth In Crisis... |
...or is it? |
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The Great Global Warming Swindle
(08/03/07) |
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...ok looks like in fact it is: |
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The Great Global Warming Swindle: A Critique |
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BUT that's not the point.
Instead of arguing about whether climate change is
happening or not, we should be considering our safest course of action:
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Organised crime: the $2
trillion threat to the world's security
Billions of dollars worth of bribes paid each year go into
the pockets of public officials in rich countries
Julian Borger, diplomatic editor
Wednesday September 12, 2007
Guardian
International organised crime has become a $2 trillion (984bn) behemoth
that threatens to pervert democracy around the world and fuel already
dangerous levels of global inequality, a new study warns.
While the world is getting richer, the relentless rise of organised crime
has emerged as one of the most potent threats to the planet's future,
alongside global warming and the scarcity of drinkable water, according to
the State of the Future survey by the World Federation of United Nations
Associations.
The annual takings of criminal gangs around the world are roughly equivalent
to Britain's GDP, or twice the world's combined defence budgets. Half of
that amount is paid as bribes, which tend to make the rich and powerful even
wealthier.
The 225 richest people on the planet now earn the same as the poorest 2.7bn,
equivalent to 40% of humankind, the report finds. And although democracy is
on the rise, with nearly half the world's population now living in
democratic systems, it is in danger of being demolished by a culture of
bribery.
"The implications the world has to understand is that government decisions
can be bought and sold," Jerome Glenn, head of the association's millennium
project and one of the report's authors said. "What happens if organised
crime decides that instead of buying and selling cocaine or heroin, it's
going to buy and sell government decisions? That's a threat to democracy."
Contrary to the stereotype of the banana republic, only a minority of the
political bribes paid each year goes to public officials in the developing
world. The report published this week finds "the vast majority of bribes are
paid to people in richer countries" where decision taking is "vulnerable to
vast amounts of money".
Much of the income, more than $520bn, that flows through the world's black
economy comes from counterfeiting and piracy. The drug trade is the second
biggest earner, with an estimated $320bn in takings. Human trafficking is a
small industry by comparison, worth under $44bn but arguably the most
pernicious. According to the UN, up to 27 million people are now held in
slavery, far more than at the peak of the African slave trade. The majority
of the victims this time are Asian women.
The report says: "Violence against women by men continues to cause more
casualties than wars do today." One in five women around the world will be a
victim of rape or attempted rape in her lifetime. The situation is so bad
schools should teach girls martial arts for self-defence, it says.
"We have departments of defence around the world protecting people. What's
the department of defence for women?" Mr Glenn asked.
The survey, however, does find that for most people the world is becoming "a
better place", and should continue to improve over the next decade, with
generally rising incomes, life expectancy and access to health and
education.
The global economy grew by 5.4% in 2006, far outstripping population growth
of just over 1%. "At this rate, world poverty will be cut by more than half
between 2000 and 2015, meeting the UN millennium development goal for
poverty reduction, except in sub-Saharan Africa," it predicts.
According to the WHO, the world's average life expectancy is expected to
increase, from 48 years for those born in 1955, to 73 years for those born
in 2025.
Peace
And despite the continuing atrocities in Iraq, Afghanistan and Darfur, the
world is overall becoming a more peaceful place, according to the report. In
Africa the number of conflicts fell from 16 in 2002 to just five in 2005.
By crunching all this data into an overall measure of wellbeing, the
report's authors have derived an index for the future. It slopes
reassuringly upwards over the next 10 years but the principal threats to
this optimism appear to come from such effects as poverty levels, global
warming, water shortages and organised crime. The last may be the most
dangerous because of its capacity to subvert decision making and because
there is little concerted international action to combat the threat.
"It is time for an international campaign by all sectors of society to
develop a global consensus for action against [transnational organised
crime] which has grown to the point where it is increasingly interfering
with the ability of governments to act," the report says.
It points out that the global estimate of 13 to 15 million children made
orphans through Aids represents a gigantic pool of potential foot-soldiers
for criminal gangs. "There is nothing stopping it," Mr Glenn said.
"There is no global strategy."
In numbers
211m: Globally, the number of people affected by natural disasters every
year
225: Number of rich people with the same combined income as 2.7 billion poor
18%: Proportion of people unable to read, compared with 37% illiteracy in
1970
1 in 5: Proportion of women who will be a victim of rape or attempted rape
$1000bn: The cost of world corruption in 2006
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Greens need to grasp the
nettle: aren't there just too many people?
Reducing consumption is imperative, but it's pointless to cut
out meat and cars while having lots of children
Madeleine Bunting
Monday September 10, 2007
The Guardian
It's the one issue no environmentalist organisation wants to talk about.
Population. Thirty years ago, when international concern first began to
mobilise about the planet's future, it was the pre-eminent question, but now
you're hard put to get a straight answer. Does the UK need population
management? Does the world need it?
This is one of those issues that is regarded by many privately as common
sense but rarely gets a public airing. Of the environmental organisations I
managed to contact, all acknowledged that it was frequently brought up by
the public in meetings and letters. Yet all said they did not campaign on
the subject and had no position on it. It seems that there is a worrying
disconnect between a generally accepted consensus among those who shape the
national conversation about the environment and their audiences, who either
are much less certain or believe that, if the planet's resources are being
grossly depleted, there are just too many of us about.
Too many people. That is certainly the impression from studying the maps
published today by the Campaign to Protect Rural England, which chart how
fast the areas of the country undisturbed by urban development, roads or
other noise are disappearing. Since the 60s, whole chunks of England have
been broken up into small fragments, absorbed into a dense network of towns,
cities and major roads.
The maps reinforce what people experience. You try getting away from it all
in England, and you are tangled in traffic jams, shoe-horned into campsites,
followed by the whine of motor-bikes and the roar of traffic even up on the
hills. We live in a crowded island - a truth that it has become unacceptable
to acknowledge because of the unpleasant associations it brings with it.
But England is now the second most densely populated country in Europe,
after Belgium, and at current rates of increase it could be second only to
Bangladesh in the world by 2074. There are those who argue that there's no
need for alarm, and that we can concentrate development in brownfield sites
to accommodate all the millions of extra homes needed. But how many more
people can you squeeze into cities that already seem to be choking under the
weight of their population density - the buses and trains packed, the
streets clogged and the parks on a Sunday afternoon teeming with people.
It's not surprising that environmental organisations fight shy of getting
into this subject. It embroils them in a host of deeply emotive and
difficult debates. Immigration for one. Most of the UK population growth in
the next few decades will be attributable to immigration. Should we have a
balanced migration policy with a net zero increase? Given how many
British-born are emigrating to Australia, the US, Spain and France, it would
still allow us to maintain our international responsibilities to provide
asylum. But it wouldn't allow us to absorb the same quantities of cheap east
European labour that have subsidised our economic growth.
Population management is just as emotive. People quickly bristle at the idea
of any government telling them how many children they can have. The whole
policy area of population was given a bad name by India's enthusiasm in the
70s and 80s when government programmes ensnared uncomprehending young men
into having vasectomies. But should the UK government pursue a policy of
persuasion, a Stop at Two campaign, to bring people's attention to the
carbon footprint of having lots of children? If it did, would it work?
Internationally, population policy has been crippled by US and Vatican
opposition on abortion and contraception. Have they managed to bully
environmental organisations into this awkward silence?
When challenged, environmentalists have coherent arguments to defend their
retreat from the population debate. They insist that the pressure on the
earth's resources - its water, forests, soil fertility - and carbon
emissions are all about consumption and lifestyle, not about sheer numbers
of human beings. They rightly point out that the average American produces
some 20 tonnes of carbon a year while some of those living in areas of the
world with the fastest growing populations, such as Africa, produce a tiny
fraction of that kind of carbon footprint. They insist that the earth can
support the 9 billion now predicted by 2050 (the increase in the next 40
years will equate to roughly what the entire global population was in 1950)
if everyone is living sustainable lifestyles. The focus of campaigning must
stay on the consumption patterns of the developed world, rather than on
numbers of people.
But there is growing disquiet that it's not an either/or. As the environment
finally gets the prominence it deserves, some environmentalists are prepared
to assert that population management has to be on the agenda. Christopher
Rapley, the director of the Science Museum, has spoken out on the subject;
Jonathon Porritt, chair of the government's Sustainability Development
Commission, admits it is "tough territory" but argues that "it is
intellectually unjustifiable" for the environmental movement not to address
it. He wants to see a UK population policy that covers both family planning
and immigration, aimed at long-term population decline. That would mark a
dramatic shift in policy. In particular, he rejects the oft-cited need to
keep up the birth rate to pay for pensions. But his attempts to get the
government to engage have got nowhere.
As Porritt ruefully admits, his position lands him in some unsavoury
company. The Optimum Population Trust proposes some batty ideas such as
government campaigns on the unattractiveness of parenthood. And it gets much
worse. As is often the case where there is a disconnect between public
debate and popular sentiment, the British National party (BNP) is stepping
in to grab the territory. It argues that "our countryside is vanishing
beneath a tidal wave of concrete", "immigration is creating an environmental
disaster" and Britain could become "a tarmac desert".
The BNP is peddling alarmist nonsense. Only 8% of the land of this country
is built on, but, as a Mori poll commissioned for Kate Barker's review of
land use for the Treasury showed, it doesn't feel like that: those polled
put the figure at 50%. This sense of crowdedness and the resentment it can
generate needs a grown-up debate. That means talking about consumption
patterns and population numbers. It includes pointing out that consumer
trends - such as our taste for mobility, the move to smaller households and
multiple bathrooms - squeeze the space and resources we share on a small
island. But it would also include discussion of the environmental impacts of
migration and family size. There's no point giving up your meat and your
car, recycling your rubbish and producing lots of children. The challenge is
to have that debate while steering well clear of racism - or of the
authoritarianism that lurks in the background of environmentalism.
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Science chief: cut birthrate
to save Earth
New museum head says lower population would cut CO2 at a
fraction of renewable energy cost
Robin McKie
The Observer
July 22 2007
The new head of the Science Museum has an uncompromising view about how
global warming should be dealt with: get rid of a few billion people. Chris
Rapley, who takes up his post on September 1, is not afraid of offending. 'I
am not advocating genocide,' said Rapley. 'What I am saying is that if we
invest in ways to reduce the birthrate - by improving contraception,
education and healthcare - we will stop the world's population reaching its
current estimated limit of between eight and 10 billion.
'That in turn will mean less carbon dioxide is being pumped into the
atmosphere because there will be fewer people to drive cars and use
electricity. The crucial point is that to achieve this goal you would only
have to spend a fraction of the money that will be needed to bring about
technological fixes, new nuclear power plants or renewable energy plants.
However, everyone has decided, quietly, to ignore the issue.'
Such arguments give an indication of the priorities of the new Science
Museum chief, an office that has been vacant since 2005 when Lindsay Sharp
abruptly left the 150,000 post following rows about financial waste,
cronyism and the 'Disneyfication' of exhibitions.
Now Rapley, currently head of the British Antarctic Survey and a passionate
believer in man's influence on climate, is set to take charge of the museum,
one of Britain's most challenging institutions, where strict academic
requirements must be met while competing with Legoland and Disneyland to
attract visitors. Only by tackling the issues of the day can he succeed,
Rapley said.
Hence his urging that we deal with overpopulation, a call of wide public
interest and one that reflects the contents of the recent report by the
Optimum Population Trust, which called for each couple in Britain to be
limited to having two children each. 'A voluntary stop-at-two guideline
should be adopted for couples in the UK who want to adopt greener
lifestyles,' it stated.
The interest of Rapley, 60, in this subject stems directly from his climatic
concerns. He sits near the extreme end of scientific views about global
warming. He fears our planet faces a very hot and uncomfortable future. This
belief puts him opposite climate-change deniers, about whom Rapley is
generally vitriolic. He described the recent Channel 4 programme The Great
Global Warming Swindle as 'a tissue of lies' while individual deniers, like
Dominic Lawson, are dismissed in unexpectedly terse, Anglo-Saxon terms.
Read the full content
'As to my job at the Science Museum, my remit is very simple,' Rapley said.
'It is to make it the most advanced museum in the world. I will only be able
to do that by addressing the key issues in science today and the most
important of these is climate change and energy policy. However, there are
topics like stem cell science and genomics that are set to have enormous
impact and which will have to be tackled in detail.'
Rapley is passionate about making displays and instruments far more
accessible. 'If you look at the Science Museum's great engine hall, there
are wonderful machines on display but the accompanying explanations are
quite often above most people's heads. Most children today probably don't
realise these machines run on heat and water, but that is never mentioned.
We need different explanations for different levels of understanding: the
six-year-old, the 60-year-old, the PhD student. At the same time, there is
no point having a few touch-screens about the place. People can only use
them one at a time. One idea would be to send free texts to visitors' mobile
phones, according to their needs, as they stand in front of displays. Just
about everyone has a mobile phone, after all.'
The Oxford-educated physicist earned his spurs as a scientist who built
instruments for space probes, such as X-ray detectors for the international
Solar Maximum Mission launched in 1980. He went on to work at the Mullard
Space Science Laboratory using satellite radar scanners to study the Earth
and in particular Antarctica.
'All sorts of environmental issues lead to the Antarctic: sea-level rise,
ozone depletion, atmospheric warming,' added Rapley, who is married with two
daughters. In 1997, he was appointed head of the British Antarctic Survey
and has worked there ever since.
As to key influences, Rapley points to an English teacher at his old school,
King Edward's School, Bath, who introduced him to the works of Conan Doyle.
'I learned the joys of deduction from Sherlock Holmes and they stood me in
good stead for the rest of my life. They got me to the Science Museum, in
effect.'
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Apocalypse Now: How Mankind is
Sleepwalking to the End of the Earth
Floods, storms and droughts. Melting Arctic ice, shrinking
glaciers, oceans turning to acid. The world's top scientists warned last
week that dangerous climate change is taking place today, not the day after
tomorrow. You don't believe it? Then, says Geoffrey Lean, read this...
Sunday, February 6, 2005
The lndependent/UK
by Geoffrey Lean
Future historians, looking back from a much hotter and less hospitable
world, are likely to play special attention to the first few weeks of 2005.
As they puzzle over how a whole generation could have sleepwalked into
disaster - destroying the climate that has allowed human civilization to
flourish over the past 11,000 years - they may well identify the past weeks
as the time when the last alarms sounded.
Last week, 200 of the world's leading climate scientists - meeting at Tony
Blair's request at the Met Office's new headquarters at Exeter - issued the
most urgent warning to date that dangerous climate change is taking place,
and that time is running out.
Next week the Kyoto Protocol, the international treaty that tries to control
global warming, comes into force after a seven-year delay. But it is clear
that the protocol does not go nearly far enough.
The alarms have been going off since the beginning of one of the warmest
Januaries on record. First, Dr Rajendra Pachauri - chairman of the official
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) - told a UN conference in
Mauritius that the pollution which causes global warming has reached
"dangerous" levels.
Then the biggest-ever study of climate change, based at Oxford University,
reported that it could prove to be twice as catastrophic as the IPCC's worst
predictions. And an international task force - also reporting to Tony Blair,
and co-chaired by his close ally, Stephen Byers - concluded that we could
reach "the point of no return" in a decade.
Finally, the UK head of Shell, Lord Oxburgh, took time out - just before his
company reported record profits mainly achieved by selling oil, one of the
main causes of the problem - to warn that unless governments take urgent
action there "will be a disaster".
But it was last week at the Met Office's futuristic glass headquarters,
incongruously set in a dreary industrial estate on the outskirts of Exeter,
that it all came together. The conference had been called by the Prime
Minister to advise him on how to "avoid dangerous climate change". He needed
help in persuading the world to prioritize the issue this year during
Britain's presidencies of the EU and the G8 group of economic powers.
The conference opened with the Secretary of State for the Environment,
Margaret Beckett, warning that "a significant impact" from global warming
"is already inevitable". It continued with presentations from top scientists
and economists from every continent. These showed that some dangerous
climate change was already taking place and that catastrophic events once
thought highly improbable were now seen as likely (see panel). Avoiding the
worst was technically simple and economically cheap, they said, provided
that governments could be persuaded to take immediate action.
About halfway through I realized that I had been here before. In the summer
of 1986 the world's leading nuclear experts gathered in Vienna for an
inquest into the accident at Chernobyl. The head of the Russian delegation
showed a film shot from a helicopter, and we suddenly found ourselves gazing
down on the red-hot exposed reactor core.
It was all, of course, much less dramatic at Exeter. But as paper followed
learned paper, once again a group of world authorities were staring at a
crisis they had devoted their lives to trying to avoid.
I am willing to bet there were few in the room who did not sense their
children or grandchildren standing invisibly at their shoulders. The
conference formally concluded that climate change was "already occurring"
and that "in many cases the risks are more serious than previously thought".
But the cautious scientific language scarcely does justice to the sense of
the meeting.
We learned that glaciers are shrinking around the world. Arctic sea ice has
lost almost half its thickness in recent decades. Natural disasters are
increasing rapidly around the world. Those caused by the weather - such as
droughts, storms, and floods - are rising three times faster than those -
such as earthquakes - that are not.
We learned that bird populations in the North Sea collapsed last year, after
the sand eels on which they feed left its warmer waters - and how the number
of scientific papers recording changes in ecosystems due to global warming
has escalated from 14 to more than a thousand in five years.
Worse, leading scientists warned of catastrophic changes that once they had
dismissed as "improbable". The meeting was particularly alarmed by powerful
evidence, first reported in The Independent on Sunday last July, that the
oceans are slowly turning acid, threatening all marine life.
Professor Chris Rapley, director of the British Antarctic Survey, presented
new evidence that the West Antarctic ice sheet is beginning to melt,
threatening eventually to raise sea levels by 15ft: 90 per cent of the
world's people live near current sea levels. Recalling that the IPCC's last
report had called Antarctica "a slumbering giant", he said: "I would say
that this is now an awakened giant."
Professor Mike Schlesinger, of the University of Illinois, reported that the
shutdown of the Gulf Stream, once seen as a "low probability event", was now
45 per cent likely this century, and 70 per cent probable by 2200. If it
comes sooner rather than later it will be catastrophic for Britain and
northern Europe, giving us a climate like Labrador (which shares our
latitude) even as the rest of the world heats up: if it comes later it could
be beneficial, moderating the worst of the warming.
The experts at Exeter were virtually unanimous about the danger, mirroring
the attitude of the climate science community as a whole: humanity is to
blame. There were a few skeptics at Exeter, including Andrei Illarionov, an
adviser to Russia's President Putin, who last year called the Kyoto Protocol
"an interstate Auschwitz". But in truth it is much easier to find skeptics
among media pundits in London or neo-cons in Washington than among climate
scientists. Even the few contrarian climatalogists publish little research
to support their views, concentrating on questioning the work of others.
Now a new scientific consensus is emerging - that the warming must be kept
below an average increase of two degrees centigrade if catastrophe is to be
avoided. This almost certainly involves keeping concentrations of carbon
dioxide, the main cause of climate change, below 400 parts per million.
Unfortunately we are almost there, with concentrations exceeding 370ppm and
rising, but experts at the conference concluded that we could go briefly
above the danger level so long as we brought it down rapidly afterwards.
They added that this would involve the world reducing emissions by 50 per
cent by 2050 - and rich countries cutting theirs by 30 per cent by 2020.
Economists stressed there is little time for delay. If action is put off for
a decade, it will need to be twice as radical; if it has to wait 20 years,
it will cost between three and seven times as much.
The good news is that it can be done with existing technology, by cutting
energy waste, expanding the use of renewable sources, growing trees and
crops (which remove carbon dioxide from the air) to turn into fuel,
capturing the gas before it is released from power stations, and - maybe -
using more nuclear energy.
The better news is that it would not cost much: one estimate suggested the
cost would be about 1 per cent of Europe's GNP spread over 20 years; another
suggested it meant postponing an expected fivefold increase in world wealth
by just two years. Many experts believe combating global warming would
increase prosperity, by bringing in new technologies.
The big question is whether governments will act. President Bush's
opposition to international action remains the greatest obstacle. Tony
Blair, by almost universal agreement, remains the leader with the best
chance of persuading him to change his mind.
But so far the Prime Minister has been more influenced by the President than
the other way round. He appears to be moving away from fighting for the
pollution reductions needed in favor of agreeing on a vague pledge to bring
in new technologies sometime in the future.
By then it will be too late. And our children and grandchildren will wonder
- as we do in surveying, for example, the drift into the First World War -
"how on earth could they be so blind?"
WATER WARS
What could happen? Wars break out over diminishing water resources as
populations grow and rains fail.
How would this come about? Over 25 per cent more people than at present are
expected to live in countries where water is scarce in the future, and
global warming will make it worse.
How likely is it? Former UN chief Boutros Boutros-Ghali has long said that
the next Middle East war will be fought for water, not oil.
DISAPPEARING NATIONS
What could happen? Low-lying island such as the Maldives and Tuvalu - with
highest points only a few feet above sea-level - will disappear off the face
of the Earth.
How would this come about? As the world heats up, sea levels are rising,
partly because glaciers are melting, and partly because the water in the
oceans expands as it gets warmer.
How likely is it? Inevitable. Even if global warming stopped today, the seas
would continue to rise for centuries. Some small islands have already sunk
for ever. A year ago, Tuvalu was briefly submerged.
FLOODING
What could happen? London, New York, Tokyo, Bombay, many other cities and
vast areas of countries from Britain to Bangladesh disappear under tens of
feet of water, as the seas rise dramatically.
How would this come about? Ice caps in Greenland and Antarctica melt. The
Greenland ice sheet would raise sea levels by more than 20ft, the West
Antarctic ice sheet by another 15ft.
How likely is it? Scientists used to think it unlikely, but this year
reported that the melting of both ice caps had begun. It will take hundreds
of years, however, for the seas to rise that much.
UNINHABITABLE EARTH
What could happen? Global warming escalates to the point where the world's
whole climate abruptly switches, turning it permanently into a much hotter
and less hospitable planet.
How would this come about? A process involving "positive feedback" causes
the warming to fuel itself, until it reaches a point that finally tips the
climate pattern over.
How likely is it? Abrupt flips have happened in the prehistoric past.
Scientists believe this is unlikely, at least in the foreseeable future, but
increasingly they are refusing to rule it out.
RAINFOREST FIRES
What could happen? Famously wet tropical forests, such as those in the
Amazon, go up in flames, destroying the world's richest wildlife habitats
and releasing vast amounts of carbon dioxide to speed global warming.
How would this come about? Britain's Met Office predicted in 1999 that much
of the Amazon will dry out and die within 50 years, making it ready for
sparks - from humans or lightning - to set it ablaze.
How likely is it? Very, if the predictions turn out to be right. Already
there have been massive forest fires in Borneo and Amazonia, casting palls
of highly polluting smoke over vast areas.
THE BIG FREEZE
What could happen? Britain and northern Europe get much colder because the
Gulf Stream, which provides as much heat as the sun in winter, fails.
How would this come about? Melting polar ice sends fresh water into the
North Atlantic. The less salty water fails to generate the underwater
current which the Gulf Stream needs.
How likely is it? About evens for a Gulf Steam failure this century, said
scientists last week.
STARVATION
What could happen? Food production collapses in Africa, for example, as
rainfall dries up and droughts increase. As farmland turns to desert, people
flee in their millions in search of food.
How would this come about? Rainfall is expected to decrease by up to 60 per
cent in winter and 30 per cent in summer in southern Africa this century. By
some estimates, Zambia could lose almost all its farms.
How likely is it? Pretty likely unless the world tackles both global warming
and Africa's decline. Scientists agree that droughts will increase in a
warmer world.
ACID OCEANS
What could happen? The seas will gradually turn more and more acid. Coral
reefs, shellfish and plankton, on which all life depends, will die off. Much
of the life of the oceans will become extinct.
How would this come about? The oceans have absorbed half the carbon dioxide,
the main cause of global warming, so far emitted by humanity. This forms
dilute carbonic acid, which attacks corals and shells.
How likely is it? It is already starting. Scientists warn that the chemistry
of the oceans is changing in ways unprecedented for 20 million years. Some
predict that the world's coral reefs will die within 35 years.
DISEASE
What could happen? Malaria - which kills two million people worldwide every
year - reaches Britain with foreign travelers, gets picked up by British
mosquitos and becomes endemic in the warmer climate.
How would this come about? Four of our 40 mosquito species can carry the
disease, and hundreds of travelers return with it annually. The insects
breed faster, and feed more, in warmer temperatures.
How likely is it? A Department of Health study has suggested it may happen
by 2050: the Environment Agency has mentioned 2020. Some experts say it is
miraculous that it has not happened already.
HURRICANES
What could happen? Hurricanes, typhoons and violent storms proliferate, grow
even fiercer, and hit new areas. Last September's repeated battering of
Florida and the Caribbean may be just a foretaste of what is to come, say
scientists.
How would this come about? The storms gather their energy from warm seas,
and so, as oceans heat up, fiercer ones occur and threaten areas where at
present the seas are too cool for such weather.
How likely is it? Scientists are divided over whether storms will get more
frequent and whether the process has already begun.
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Toilet
humour |
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