Global warming is on course to become the most important issue facing the countries of the Asia Pacific region this century. The effects of unprecedented rapid climatic warming – are already a serious regional problem.
Take these statistics about the current effects of global warming between the 1960s and 1990s:
- Number of weather related disasters = 4.5 times higher
- Economic losses = 7.9 times higher
- Non-weather related disasters = 1.5 times higher
- Insurance losses = 13.6 times higher
- 1950-2000 average sea level rise = just under 10 cm.
- the Artic ice shelf has contracted 25 percent since the mid 1970s
If no action is taken financially debilitating economic costs and acute social disruption is a longer term probability globally and for the Asia-Pacific region according to an overwhelming consensus of the world’s scientists and climatologists.
The phenomenon is not new: as far back as 1988 the international Conference on the Changing Atmosphere noted:
“Humanity is conducting an unintended, uncontrolled, globally pervasive experiment whose ultimate consequences could be second only to a global nuclear war. The earth’s atmosphere is being changed at an unprecedented rate by pollutants resulting from human activities, inefficient and wasteful fossil fuel use and the effects of rapid population growth in many regions. These change represent a major threat to international security and are already having harmful consequences over many parts of the globe.”
By 2003 these trends and concerns were being confirmed and reinforced. Nobel Laureat Paul Crutzen and Will Steffen Executive director of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Program jointly stated:
“In terms of key environmental parameters the earth system has recently moved well outside the range of natural variability exhibited over the last half million years. The nature of changes now occurring simultaneously in the Earth System, their magnitude and rates of change are unprecedented and unsustainable.”
Key to the understanding of global warming is the utter uniqueness of its consequences. There is a parallel with the AIDS epidemic’s perverse delayed time bomb effect. Scientists are warning that there is a global warming ‘tipping point’ when further climate change may become irreversible. If we reach this point – that is, if temperatures rise to the higher end of the probabilities – 5 degrees by 2001 – catastrophic consequences are in the offing.
An eminent Australian climatologist Barrie Pittock warns in his book “Climate Change –Turning up the heat”:
“..evidence from the past climate changes of similar magnitude (to that projected in 21 st Century) point to major impacts which, if humans had been present in numbers like today, would have been disastrous.”
Finally while the direct effects of global warming will fall unevenly on countries of the Asia-Pacific their economies’ high level of dependence on trade and investment will mean the global effect of global warming will be directly transmitted to the region.
Is all this alarmist and exaggerated? EWC alumni are invited to join the blog and debate the issues. For the uninitiated a blog is simply an online forum where anyone can contribute to an open debate by emailing their views and having it displayed on the blog site. To start the ball rolling you are invited to:
- Comment on the issues. That is:
- How serious is climate change?
- How severe is it likely to be in the future?
- Who is to blame? Is it a developed world problem?
- Is the cost of controlling global warming too much?
- How are we going to avoid the consequences?
- Secondly, Alumni are also invited to provide a profile of how climate change is affecting their own country. That is:
Your country and global warming
- What are the visible/verifiable signs of global warming (or lack of)?
For example does weather data show marked changes and variability over time? Are droughts/floods/typhoons becoming more severe? Are rainfall levels changing are snow lines and glaciers glaciers retreating? Is biodiversity being threatened?
- What are the likely future consequences?
- What are your government’s policies on climate changes both
regarding the domestic agenda and the international agenda?
- What is your countries’ energy and COs emission profile?
Contribution: Jeremy Webb, EWC Alumni Chapter Brisbane, Australia.
Learn more: Climate Change .doc