Reader Frederick Colbourne put Bangladesh and its woes in what I feel is a proper perspective. I’ve upgraded his comment to a post.
Once again it is a sad story that politicians are using computer-generated climate disasters of the far future as a cynical, lethal and obscenely expensive distraction of today’s real problems. The money flowing into the folly of “climate protection” would have been far better spent had it been invested where it was really needed. Worse it is distraction from the political failures of those calling for climate protection.
Comment by Frederick Colbourne:
Among journalists (and the public too) there is profound ignorance about the physical Earth. I recall from a beginning physical geography course that deltas subside and that also the great rivers gradually extend seaward by depositing silt and clay.
When I worked in Bangladesh last year on an urban development project last year, I found that other false claims are being made too: that offshore islands are being destroyed by climate change. However, the reality is that offshore islands drift with currents in the Gulf of Bengal.
So many myths about the Earth! There are even vestiges of the Garden of Eden myth: the belief that at some time in the past, the Earth was benign. Nature is neither benign nor malevolent.
Nature is indifferent to the affairs of Man. The geographical disadvantages of eastern Bengal are ancient but made worse by growth of population to over 100 million people in a land that has few resources apart from land and rivers. These rivers flood about 40% of the land each year.
Religious and political conflicts led to partition of British India 65 years ago. Since then Bangladeshis have suffered a war of independence and military rule, either overt or behind the scenes. Bangladesh is one of the worst-governed countries in the world.
Climate change is the least of Bangladesh’s worries.”
Energy and Poverty are obviously tied together.
“Access to cleaner and affordable energy options is essential for improving the livelihoods of the poor in developing countries. The link between energy and poverty is demonstrated by the fact that the poor in developing countries constitute the bulk of an estimated 2.7 billion people relying on traditional biomass for cooking and the overwhelming majority of the 1.4 billion without access to grid electricity. Most of the people still reliant on traditional biomass live in Africa and South Asia.
The relationship is, in many respects, a vicious cycle in which people who lack access to cleaner and affordable energy are often trapped in a re-enforcing cycle of deprivation, lower incomes and the means to improve their living conditions while at the same time using significant amounts of their very limited income on expensive and unhealthy forms of energy that provide poor and/or unsafe services.”
http://www.iiasa.ac.at/web/home/research/Flagship-Projects/Global-Energy-Assessment/GEA_Chapter2_development_hires.pdf
The moral of this is very clear. Where energy is scarce and expensive, people’s labor is cheap and they live in poverty. When energy is reliable and cheap, people are paid well to work and they have a better life.
Political failures for climate protection are foremost failures of climate science.
It could be time to recall Stefan Rahmstorf “Global Cooling-Wanna Bet? (stefan @ 8 May 2008 ) at: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2008/05/global-cooling-wanna-bet/langswitch_lang/en/ because Keenly et al (NATURE. 2008) predicted: “… the initialised prediction indicates a slight cooling relative to 1994-2004 conditions” with regard to :
Their “… two forecasts for global temperature, as discussed in the last paragraphs of their paper and shown in their Figure 4 (see below). The first forecast concerns the time interval 2000-2010, while the second concerns the interval 2005-2015”.
Now Rahmstorf et al abstract says: “Possible changes in Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) provide a key source of uncertainty regarding future climate change. Maps of temperature trends over the twentieth century show a conspicuous region of cooling in the northern Atlantic….”
Stefan Rahmstorf Abstract at: http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate2554.html
Dissscussed at:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/03/24/michael-mann-and-stefan-rahmstorf-claim-the-gulf-stream-is-slowing-due-to-greenland-ice-melt-except-reality-says-otherwise/
Sacrifice of the living for the theorized welfare of the future has been a hallmark of statist tyrannies at least since Lenin .