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Dealing with Climate Risks: Adaptation
Chris Vernon, The Oil Drum: Europe
The Earth system is currently under going changes associated with climate change. Changes are of rates and magnitudes not previously experienced by today’s globalised industrial society and so present a new and unique challenge to industry, settlement and society.
On a timescale important to today’s globalised industrial society the Earth system has experienced a significant forcing resulting from the very activities of this society. These forces arise from agriculture, industry, energy, transport and settlement based activities and apply pressures with resulting changes to the Earth system. As nothing can exist in total isolation from the Earth system industrial society must then cope with these changes.
This post considers adaptation with a comparison of a recent publication from the UK’s Institute of Mechanical Engineers and Rob Hopkin’s Transition Handbook.
The impacts on all aspects of society are not equal but depend on vulnerability and resilience. Adger (2006) describes vulnerability as the state of susceptibility to harm from exposure to stresses associated with environmental and social change and from the absence of capacity to adapt. Resilience refers to the amount of change a system can absorb before its state becomes changed. In this paper the adaptation of industrial settlement and society to climate risks is discussed.
Smit and Wandel (2006) describe adaptation in this context as a process, action or outcome in a system in order for the system to better cope with, manage or adjust to some changing condition, stress, hazard, risk or opportunity. Smit and Wandel (2006) go on to describe adaptations as manifestations of adaptive capacity which reduce vulnerability. The adaptive capacity is the ability of a system to adjust to the changing external condition.
(14 May 2009)
Global Warming May Exceed Infections as Health Threat
Michelle Fay Cortez and Alex Morales, Bloomberg
Global warming is the biggest public health threat of the 21st century, eclipsing infectious diseases, water shortages and poverty, a team of medical and climate-change researchers concluded.
The phenomenon will be felt first in the developing world, further burdening a population already in crisis from food shortages, said the report from University College London that was published today in The Lancet journal. The changing climate will also cause real and lasting damage to the Western world, affecting generations to come, said Anthony Costello, a pediatrician at University College London.
“Climate change is a health issue affecting billions of people, not just an environmental issue about polar bears and deforestation,” Costello said during a news conference. “We are setting up a world for our children and grandchildren that may be extremely frightening and turbulent.”
(14 May 2009)
Climate change biggest threat to health, doctors say
Sarah Boseley, Guardian
Senior doctors today published a report warning that climate change is the biggest threat to global health of the 21st century.
Rising global temperatures would have a catastrophic effect on human health, the doctors said, and patterns of infection would change, with insect-borne diseases such as malaria and dengue fever spreading more easily.
Heatwaves such as occurred in Europe in 2003, which caused up to 70,000 “excess” deaths, will become more common, as will hurricanes, cyclones and storms, causing flooding and injuries.
“We have not just underestimated but completely neglected and ignored this issue,” said Richard Horton, editor of the Lancet …
(13 May 2009)
Bill McKibben: Can 350.org save the world?
Bill McKibben, Los Angeles Tiimes
… The trouble is, physics and chemistry aren’t adjusting their schedule to fit our political and economic convenience. Each week brings new accounts of crashing ice sheets and spreading droughts. The scientific journal Nature said in its April 29 cover story that “a growing number of scientists agree that the CO2 challenge is even greater than had been previously thought.”
As politics gets slower, global warming speeds up. The problem isn’t feckless officials. Obama has a dream team of climate specialists: Clinton administration EPA veteran Carol Browner as energy czar, Harvard physicist John Holdren as top science advisor, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Steven Chu as Energy secretary and Oakland activist Van Jones as White House green jobs coordinator.
And the problem isn’t that environmental groups aren’t working hard enough. I’ve never seen them work more tirelessly, with lobbying efforts in capitals around the world.
In fact, the problem is pretty simple: The environmental movement isn’t big enough. It’s one of the most selfless of advocacy efforts. But the movement has been sized to save whales and build national parks and force carmakers to stick catalytic converters on exhaust systems. It’s nowhere near big enough to take on the fossil fuel industry, the biggest player in our global economy. It’s like sending the Food and Drug Administration to fight the war in Afghanistan.
(15 May 2009)
