Global warming causes 300,000 deaths a year, says Kofi Annan thinktank

Climate change is greatest humanitarian challenge facing the world as heatwaves, floods and forest fires become more severe
John Vidal, guardian.co.uk, May 29, 2009

Climate change is already responsible for 300,000 deaths a year and is affecting 300m people, according to the first comprehensive study of the human impact of global warming.

It projects that increasingly severe heatwaves, floods, storms and forest fires will be responsible for as many as 500,000 deaths a year by 2030, making it the greatest humanitarian challenge the world faces.

Economic losses due to climate change today amount to more than $125bn a year — more than all the present world aid. The report comes from former UN secretary general Kofi Annan's thinktank, the Global Humanitarian Forum. By 2030, the report says, climate change could cost $600bn a year.

Civil unrest may also increase because of weather-related events, the report says: "Four billion people are vulnerable now and 500m are now at extreme risk. Weather-related disasters ... bring hunger, disease, poverty and lost livelihoods. They pose a threat to social and political stability".

If emissions are not brought under control, within 25 years, the report states:

• 310m more people will suffer adverse health consequences related to temperature increases

• 20m more people will fall into poverty

• 75m extra people will be displaced by climate change.

Climate change is expected to have the most severe impact on water supplies . "Shortages in future are likely to threaten food production, reduce sanitation, hinder economic development and damage ecosystems. It causes more violent swings between floods and droughts. Hundreds of millions of people are expected to become water stressed by climate change by the 2030. ".

The study says it is impossible to be certain who will be displaced by 2030, but that tens of millions of people "will be driven from their homelands by weather disasters or gradual environmental degradation. The problem is most severe in Africa, Bangladesh, Egypt, coastal zones and forest areas. ."

The study compares for the first time the number of people affected by climate change in rich and poor countries. Nearly 98% of the people seriously affected, 99% of all deaths from weather-related disasters and 90% of the total economic losses are now borne by developing countries. The populations most at risk it says, are in sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, south Asia and the small island states of the Pacific.

But of the 12 countries considered least at risk, including Britain, all but one are industrially developed. Together they have made nearly $72bn available to adapt themselves to climate change but have pledged only $400m to help poor countries. "This is less than one state in Germany is spending on improving its flood defences," says the report.

The study comes as diplomats from 192 countries prepare to meet in Bonn next week for UN climate change talks aimed at reaching a global agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in December in Copenhagen. "The world is at a crossroads. We can no longer afford to ignore the human impact of climate change. This is a call to the negotiators to come to the most ambitious agreement ever negotiated or to continue to accept mass starvartion, mass sickness and mass migration on an ever growing scale," said Kofi Annan, who launched the report today in London.

Annan blamed politians for the current impasse in the negotiations and widespread ignorance in many countries. "Weak leadership, as evident today, is alarming. If leaders cannot assume responsibility they will fail humanity. Agreement is in the interests of every human being."

Barabra Stocking, head of Oxfam said: "Adaptation efforts need to be scaled up dramatically.The world's poorest are the hardest hit, but they have done the least to cause it.

Nobel peace prizewinner Wangari Maathai, said: "Climate change is life or death. It is the new global battlefield. It is being presented as if it is the problem of the developed world. But it's the developed world that has precipitated global warming."

Calculations for the report are based on data provided by the World Bank, the World Health organisation, the UN, the Potsdam Insitute For Climate Impact Research, and others, including leading insurance companies and Oxfam. However, the authors accept that the estimates are uncertain and could be higher or lower. The paper was reviewed by 10 of the world's leading experts incluing Rajendra Pachauri, head of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change, Jeffrey Sachs, of Columbia University and Margareta Wahlström, assistant UN secretary general for disaster risk reduction.

94 dead, thousands homeless in Afghan floods

Reuters, May 26, 2009

Heavy flooding and landslides have killed 94 people and left thousands of families homeless in northern Afghanistan since May 20, the United Nations said.

Some 8,000 houses in 207 villages have been totally or partially destroyed after heavy rain across five provinces, affecting 13,689 families, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said.

The flooding damaged more than 100 bridges and around 600 kilometres of roads.

Around 30 people were also killed by flooding in northern areas of the country earlier this month.

The mud-built homes that house most Afghans in rural areas, are particularly vulnerable to natural disasters in a country at risk from earthquakes, floods and landslides.

Rising Seas to Destroy U.S. Beaches

By Andrea Thompson, LiveScience Staff Writer, June 22, 2007

You may have to kiss that summer trip to the beach goodbye later this century, thanks to rising sea levels and more intense tropical storms, scientists predict.

A new study of the potential sand losses to North Carolina beaches reports that a 1-foot rise in sea level in the next 25 to 75 years (which is at the lower end of the range predicted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) would cause the coast to move inland by 2,000 to 10,000 feet and could cost an estimated $223 million in lost recreational value by 2080 to beach-goers in that state alone.

Predicting exactly how much beaches will shrink is impossible because beach erosion rates are highly variable, even between points that are only a few miles apart. The make-up of each beach's sand, the absence or presence of jetties and other man-made structures meant to retain sand, and offshore topography (which influences wave formation), all affect erosion rates.

But even with all the uncertainty, scientists say the future of our beloved sandy havens doesn’t look good.

“We have no way of predicting what sea level rise will do to erosion rates, except to say that they will increase,” said Duke University geologist Orrin Pilkey, who was not involved in the new study.

Forces of erosion

Hurricanes pose a particular threat to beaches because the floods of ocean water they can push onshore, called storm surge, can wash away large amounts of sand. Typically the sand returns to the beaches (so there’s plenty available to build that sandcastle or bury your dad). But if global warming intensifies hurricanes as some have predicted (either by increasing their frequency or the strength of individual storms), it may also impair beaches’ ability to recover.

For North Carolina’s beaches, the report says, even if hurricanes strike with their current frequency and intensity, sea level rise will make the effects of the storms worse.

Sea level rise is another ominous potential eroding force, at least for beaches that are highly developed. When seas rise, undeveloped beaches can simply shift further inland, but because roads, buildings and other man-made structures act as a barrier, the sand at developed beaches cannot migrate backward. Effectively, relentless waves will wear away the sand and these beaches will shrink until there’s simply no sand left for sunbathing or seaside strolls.

“We create the [beach erosion] problem,” Pilkey said.

In fact, Pilkey says, the building of jetties and sea walls may be doing the most damage for now, because while they preserve a small portion of the shoreline near the structure, they actually result in more coastal erosion further from the structure than would have occurred naturally.

“I suspect that may be more important than sea level rise,” he told LiveScience, but that trend will eventually change later, with global warming’s forces surpassing the impact of sea walls and jetties.

For West Coast U.S. beaches, erosion from sea level rise and storms is less of a threat than on the East Coast, because the "left" coastline tends to be higher and steeper, but that doesn’t mean beach-goers there are in the clear. One of the main sources of sand for these beaches is river transport, but dams built along western rivers block this sand, which causes the beaches to erode.

More crowded beaches

With beaches slowly vanishing from the coasts, vacationers might have to find some other way to entertain themselves and soak up the sun in the summer in the coming decades.

“I’m predicting that they [will take] fewer beach trips,” said lead author of the North Carolina study John Whitehead of Appalachian State University in North Carolina. The report was funded by the National Commission on Energy Policy, a bipartisan, non-profit group of energy experts.

By surveying beach-goers, Whitehead found that people prefer wider beaches, which provide more room for throwing Frisbees and eating sandy sandwiches. By determining how far people will drive to these roomier beaches and calculating the cost of those drives, Whitehead estimated the millions of dollars that would be lost to vacationers.

And for those for whom the allure of a vacation at the beach is simply irresistible, few options will be left, as the only beaches to survive would likely be the ones that are undeveloped now.

“People would have more limited beach options,” sociologist Maureen Harrington of Griffith University in Australia said in an email interview. “[They] would have to go to beaches that are able to migrate, that are not urbanized ... so these beaches would be more crowded.”

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Hurricane satellite could fail anytime

AP, June 12, 2007

MIAMI - An aging weather satellite crucial to accurate predictions on the intensity and path of hurricanes could fail at any moment and plans to launch a replacement have been pushed back seven years to 2016.

In a letter obtained by The Associated Press, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's chief said the failure of the QuikScat satellite could bring more uncertainty to forecasts and widen the areas that are placed under hurricane watches and warnings.

If the satellite faltered, experts estimate that the accuracy of two-day forecasts would suffer by 10 percent and three-day forecasts by 16 percent, which could translate into miles of coastline and the difference between a city being evacuated or not.

"We would go blind. It would be significantly hazardous," said Wayne Sallade, emergency manager in Charlotte County, which was hit hard by Hurricane Charley in 2004.

In the letter to a Florida congressman, NOAA Administrator Conrad Lautenbacher blamed the delays on technical and budget problems. Scientists said if QuikScat failed, they may have to rely on less accurate satellites.

Bill Proenza, director of the National Hurricane Center in Miami, said authorities "may have to err on the side of caution" in future forecasts.

That means "more people disrupted, and more impact on the economy," Proenza said. "On the other hand, we have to err on the side of the protection of life. And that's how we would handle it."

Lautenbacher said the replacement is part of a larger program to update America's weather satellites. The AP reported last week that other cuts in the program have included scaled-back efforts to measure global warming from space.

Last year, forecasts were off an average of 111 miles two days in advance, a figure that has been cut in half over the past 15 years. But experts said that could grow 10 percent to 122 miles if the satellite is lost, causing the "cone of error" well known to coastal residents to expand.

Some scientists also complain that the technology planned for the replacement satellite is less precise for hurricane forecasting than what is currently flying.

QuikScat, launched in 1999 and designed to last two to three years, provides key data on wind speed and direction over the ocean. Weather aircraft and buoys can also obtain similar measurements near a storm, but they do not provide a constant flow of data as QuikScat does.

Last year, the satellite suffered a major setback — the failure of a transmitter used to send data to Earth about every 90 minutes. Now the satellite is limping along on a backup transmitter and has other problems.

The backup transmitter could last years, but there are no guarantees and no warnings when it is about to fail, said Robert Gaston, who works with the satellite at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Emergency managers like Sallade have been briefed on the satellite's problems. They said if they cannot rely on forecasts, they may have to make crucial decisions earlier, such as evacuating hospital patients or moving around emergency equipment.

Emergency managers estimate that the total costs of evacuations are up to $1 million per mile of coastline, meaning wider evacuations could be expensive.

Lautenbacher's letter was sent to Rep. Ron Klein, a Florida Democrat who requested the agency's plan should the satellite fail. Klein and other members of Congress are pushing a bill that would pay for a satellite to replace QuikScat.

"I'm disappointed that this letter doesn't directly address my request for a backup plan if QuikScat fails, given that we're three weeks into a hurricane season," said Klein, who has requested a hearing on the issue.

Even if money were immediately available, a replacement satellite is estimated to take at least four years and cost approximately $400 million to build. The AP first reported those estimates in a March interview with Proenza, one of the loudest voices calling for a replacement satellite.

"When you look at QuikScat what it does is it gives us a swath of data that's 1,500 to 1,800 kilometers wide, all at one time, one moment. It covers 90 percent of the global oceans in one day," he said recently.

If the satellite fails, the options are few. Other satellites have instruments to measure wind speed and direction over water, but they are less accurate.

A European satellite called ASCAT is available, but it does not give scientists as clear a picture as QuikScat because the distance between the readings it takes is larger. Using ASCAT would be like a person who wears glasses taking them off, seeing a once-sharp world blurred, said National Hurricane Center senior hurricane specialist Rick Knabb.

A NASA and Department of Defense satellite called WINDSAT also measures wind speed and direction, but it too is beyond its expected lifespan, and scientists have had trouble using it to observe tropical weather systems.

That's a problem because NOAA intended QuikScat's replacement to be modeled on WINDSAT.

A replacement for QuikScat was originally scheduled to launch in 2009. Lautenbacher would not give a date for that flight in the letter, but other officials have said it is scheduled to launch in 2016.

The satellite's final form is still undetermined, but Knabb said the design does not currently feature technology comparable to QuikScat. He said the satellite's data will not be particularly helpful for hurricanes.

"When we need the data the most is when it's not going to perform very well — inside a tropical cyclone," Knabb said.