Climate change

As next month’s climate change conference in Copenhagen draws closer, we are undoubtedly going to see the amount of online discourse on the topic continue to increase. The latest example comes from the British government, which last week released an interactive map showing the possible impact of a global temperature rise of 4 degrees Celsius (7 degrees Fahrenheit). An article in the Guardian says the UK’s Met Office Hadley Centre produced the map based on a recent study that indicates, "such a 4C rise could come as soon as 2060 without urgent and serious action to reduce emissions." The newspaper also quotes the government’s chief scientist as saying that such a temperature shift would be “disastrous.”

Indeed, after exploring the map for just a few minutes, you see how devastating the consequences of a warmer planet might be. By zooming in and clicking and dragging with your mouse, you can navigate the map to see what could happen to different parts of the globe. Be sure to click on some of the plus signs, which give you a brief overview of an issue and the option to click to learn more and view sources of the research. The map, its creators say, displays the latest in peer-reviewed climate change research.

Looking around East Asia, you’ll see that some of the impacts listed include decrease in rice yield, extreme temperatures in population centers of eastern China, and flooding caused by rising sea levels.
 

(Hat tip: From Poverty to Power blog.)

Editor's note: This post is part of Blog Action Day on climate change. For more information, visit blogactionday.org.

Apologies for having been out of touch since Carbon Expo. I needed a break, and summer in Croatia proved one can have a life beyond international development and carbon finance. Climate change, however, very much stayed on my mind with reports of wildfires in the United States and Greece. Clearly, one cannot escape all-encompassing global change, in particular when negotiations have now started in earnest on a post-2012 treaty to reduce carbon emissions and provide financing for developing countries.

Some still think that climate change is just a buzz topic and will quietly disappear from global attention. Let me assure you that many people in East Asian and Pacific countries would disagree. They are hit by natural disasters, which in recent years not only steadily increased in frequency, but also in intensity.

Rows of solar collectors line the roofs of many buildings in China.

Driving through Jiangsu and Anhui provinces adjacent to Shanghai, China, last month, I was struck. Not by the sheer number of people and vehicles, or by the seemingly endless number of new buildings under construction with their distinct bamboo scaffolding, but by what was on top of those roofs: continuous rows of solar collectors.

China’s increasing emphasis on renewable energy on a large-scale level can be seen by wind farms in Inner Mongolia and several other green World Bank projects in the country. However, the most pervasive example for the public and individuals has been the explosion of the use of solar water heaters.

Impacts of climate change could cause heat stress in many plants and cause problems for grazing animals in Mongolia. (Photo courtesy of PnP! under a Creative Commons license)

Ban Ki-moon, UN Secretary General, was recently in Mongolia in part to observe the ways in which climate change is affecting this country of climatic extremes and how it needs to adapt. Of course one could be forgiven for thinking that a country with -40 degree winters, +40 degree summers, dust storms and flash floods might welcome a bit of climate change.

Unfortunately we can’t produce ‘designer climates’ just yet, and the impacts of the ways in which the Mongolian climate is changing are worrying. Already the combination of precipitation decreases and temperature increases have caused rivers and lakes to dry and herders and local government officials to complain about the lowering productivity of the steppe.