“It is misleading and just plain incorrect to claim that disasters associated with hurricanes, tornadoes, floods or droughts have increased on climate timescales either in the United States or globally,”
“It is further incorrect to associate the increasing costs of disasters with the emission of greenhouse gases.”
Statement in a Congressional hearing by Professor Roger Pielke Jr.
Environmental Studies Program, University of Colorado
The United Nations University has released the second volume of "Pushed to the Limit", a study "that examines evidence of loss and damage caused by climate change from the perspective of affected people in nine vulnerable countries".
The lead author and scientific author of the study, Dr Koko Warner (who also is a Lead Author for IPCC´s 5th Assessment Report, Working Group 2 on Adaptation) describes the study:
Our job was to go and find out what loss and damage is, what kinds of problems people are experiencing now, what they do if they have too little or too much rain, or if they have floods, or hurricanes, cyclones, sea level rise. What they are doing, and what do they need in order to be able to adjust or adapt better. The countries that we came up with were Bangladesh, Bhutan, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, the Gambia, Kenya, Micronesia, Mozambique, and Nepal. So as you can see African countries, island countries, mountain countries.--
I was in Bangladesh recently, doing fieldwork, and had a chance to sit down with women and children. Some of the women noted that they are having trouble with the weather, some of these particular women had lost their farms because of river bank erosion.
Some of the families had other relatives in the area so they went and lived with relatives. One of the women said, it's really hard because I lost my farm and the impact of that is we don't have enough food to eat and we don't have enough income, but what's really hard is that I don't have work to do during the day. People's work and their livelihoods are really a part of their identity.--
In the Satkhira district in Bangladesh, they had trouble with salt in the water and in the soil. Pregnant women were consuming the water - what else can you do, you have to drink water. They were having trouble with waterborne diseases because of flooding and cyclone activity, but they were also having trouble with their reproductive health, in part because of the high saline in the water that they were drinking. Children were having trouble with malnutrition, there were problems with eyesight and skin lesions, a whole number of health problems that they attributed to higher salt content in the water and in the soil, that had both to do with the cyclone that came through, and maybe as well incremental sea level rise - those things working together. --
When you look at all of this evidence, you see that the things that we care about the most, our identities, our cultures, poverty reduction, food security, livelihood security, safety and integrity of rural and urban areas where we live, are compromised by loss and damage that's related to climate change, and that's happening now.
Next week in Warsaw, countries will come together and discuss that big challenge for humanity. How do we avoid dangerous climate change, and what do we do about it? Because we see that loss and damage is already happening, it creates greater urgency. If we don't avoid dangerous climate change, the things that we care about most could be compromised.
It is easy to feel sympathy for the suffering people Dr Warner and her colleagues have met on their numerous trips to nine underdeveloped countries. However, Dr Werner and the United Nations University "scientists", who have wasted a lot of tax payers' money on this pseudo scientific "study" deserve no sympathy.
They must know there is no proof that global warming is causing more extreme weather, but still they choose to peddle their alarmist propaganda to weak and vulnerable people in the third world.
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