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Fragilecologies Archives
29 April 2005

“Winner Take Nothing” is the title of a collection of short stories by American author Ernest Hemingway published in 1933, four years after “A Farewell to Arms” was written. The title caught my eye and sparked my curiosity. It got me to thinking about an issue of great concern to many people and governments, not just environmentalists: the climate change issue. Although we use the phrase “climate change,” what we are really talking about is “global warming.”

Many scientists believe that global warming of the atmosphere has been caused by human activities, primarily the burning of fossil fuels (coal, oil, natural gas). The use of such fuels releases carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Other human activities that contribute to global warming include tropical deforestation, the use of certain nitrogen fertilizers in agriculture and, until recently, the rapid increase in CFC (chlorofluorocarbon) emissions.

The Kyoto Protocol is an amendment to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), an international treaty on global warming. It also reaffirms sections of the UNFCCC. Countries which ratify this Protocol commit to reduce their emissions of carbon dioxide and five other greenhouse gases, or engage in emissions trading if they maintain or increase emissions of these gases. A total of 141 countries have ratified the agreement. Notable exceptions include the United States and Australia (www.wikipedia.org).

Following several years awaiting the necessary quota for ratification, the Kyoto Protocol finally went into force as a legal binding instrument in early 2005, when Russia’s President Putin signed it in late 2004. The Protocol was designed to begin the process, at least, that would lead to a reduction in the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases (CFCs, NOx, and CH4) emitted into the atmosphere. Almost all countries around the globe, especially the major producers of greenhouse gases (with the exception of the US and Australia) have agreed to reduce their GHG (greenhouse gas) emissions. Only a few months after President Bush took office in January 2001, he announced to the world that he would not ratify the Protocol and that the Kyoto process was a dead issue. To their credit, however, European countries (Japan, Canada, among many others) ratified the Protocol, choosing to work together to reduce GHGs in spite of Bush’s opposition.

However, from President Bush’s perspective, he won. He managed to avoid committing the US to the constraints on its industry of a Kyoto-imposed quota on the amount of GHGs it would be allowed to emit in a given period of time. The Republicans in the Congress won, because they helped to support the president on an issue of great personal interest. The Republican senators from Alaska won, because they got the president’s support to open up the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) to oil exploration. As for the major energy companies, they too won, because they would still be able to sell their product in ever-increasing amounts; the future looks bright. The automobile industry seems content, because without signing the Kyoto Protocol they can continue to manufacture and market relatively expensive gas-guzzling SUVs and Hummers.

Pyrrhic victory [pir’-ik] noun:

A victory achieved at great or excessive cost, a ruinous victory.

But did the president, the Alaskan senators, the oil companies, and the auto manufacturers really win? The answer would have to be a resounding “YES” for their special interest groups, and maybe even for America and several of its fossil-fuel-dependent industries: a true domestic victory. However, from a different perspective, a longer-term one and an environmental one, it is easy to argue that the above groups have, in fact, won nothing in the long run, despite a gain in the short term: a short-term gain at the expense of long-term demise. Hence, the paradox of “winner take nothing.”

The Kyoto process that began in 1997 was an attempt to avert dangerous changes in the climate system as a result of global warming. These changes are expected to become more obvious and more severe by the middle of the 21st century. No part of the globe is expected to be immune to global warming and its consequences for societies and for ecosystems. That includes the United States. In fact, the midlatitude countries are at higher risk of impacts.

Studies suggest that with a warmer atmosphere, the US Great Plains will become drier than at present. It is not yet clear what the adverse impacts will be on the agricultural production in the breadbasket of the United States, the Midwest. Scientists have noted for a long time that the temperatures in the higher (polar) latitudes will warm faster than in the midlatitudes (a degree of warming in the latter is expected to translate into a 3-4 degree warming in the higher latitudes). Alaska is expected to feel the adverse impacts of increases in global temperatures to a greater degree. Cities in the US are expected to witness an increase in the intensity, duration, and location of heat waves, causing more human fatalities.

And then there are the coastal cities, especially the mega-cities or sprawling low-lying metropolitan coastal areas: San Francisco, Galveston, New Orleans, Miami, New York, Rotterdam, Shanghai, Bankok, and so forth. They will be subjected to an increase in the frequency and intensity of tropical storms, storm surges, incremental sea level rise, and flooding.

The point of all this is that what may appear to be a global warming “win” really turns out to be a global warming “loss.” All is not lost, though, with regard to getting the national government (in the American case, President Bush) to take action to combat global warming. Sometimes governments lead their people to take appropriate actions related to confronting a critical environmental problem. At other times (and it is the hope for America at present), the people, groups, cities and states end up leading their governments to take action because of their own political action, or the actions they take at the local level to resolve environmental problems.

Fragilecologies Archives
6 April 2005

Definition: Lightning-conductor; lightning-rod: /noun/ 1 A metal rod, usually projecting above the roof of a tall building, designed to prevent structural damage by diverting lightning directly to earth.

The odds are very high that there is a lightning rod somewhere on the White House rooftop to protect against lightning strikes that could cause power outages, if not fire. So, what are the odds for any given building to be struck by lightning? It has been estimated that the probability of a golfer being hit by lightning is about one in a million. I would assume it is even lower for hitting any individual building, given that there are so many manmade and natural structures around.

But with such a low probability, why bother seeking protection from such an unlikely (not impossible, though) occurrence? Anyway, President Bush and family can sleep tight at home knowing they are protected from the elements of Nature.

A few thousand scientists from around the globe – government scientists, independent researchers, consultants and so forth – have been engaged in three assessments of the global climate system and the warming of the Earth’s atmosphere. Today, the amount of greenhouse gases (GHGs) in the atmosphere is on the increase at an alarming pace. It is today at levels higher than in the last 400,000 years or more. Scientists have set a target of a CO2 level to avoid: double the level of the pre-industrial CO2 concentration of 265 ppmv. These scientists are in the midst of the fourth such assessment. Each assessment has suggested, and then strengthened, the view that human activities are likely responsible for the enhancement of the naturally occurring greenhouse effect. Each assessment tends to reduce the uncertainties about human involvement in global warming.

So, no big deal, right? The Earth’s atmosphere is warming up a few degrees Celsius. That’ll mean warmer winters, less snow, lowered need for heating oil, a few more disease-bearing mosquitoes or invasive species where they had not been for centuries. In fact, it is a big deal. A very big deal.

Aside from the shifting patterns of rainfall, with the dry areas becoming drier and the wet areas becoming wetter (or so the computer models suggest), other things are going to change. Sea level is already on the rise. All countries with a coastline, especially the densely populated urban centers, are at risk to sea level rise. That means people and structures are at an increased risk to coastal storm surges working off of a higher level of the sea. That, in turn, means flooding further into the hinterland. Global warming means more melting of glaciers around the globe (96% of the world’s glaciers are melting in today’s warmer atmosphere, as opposed to a century ago). The intensity and duration of extreme events such as droughts, floods, fires, and infectious disease outbreaks are expected to increase in frequency. A world that is already water-stressed will become even more so in future decades. And so forth.

The major sources of global warming are past and present-day emissions of greenhouse gases as a result of the burning of fossil fuels (coal, oil, and natural gas), tropical deforestation (the forests sequester carbon taken from the atmosphere), and various land-use practices. Although most CFC (chlorofluorocarbon) production has been banned as a result of a treaty (the Montreal Protocol), it has a century-long residence time in the atmosphere. CO2 also has a long residence time as well. What we emit today will likely be with us for decades.

The United States will not be immune from the impacts of a warmer atmosphere. For example, computer-generated scenarios of the future aside, other studies have shown that during the Altithermal period 6,000 years ago, the US midwest of North America, the proverbial breadbasket of the United States and Canada, was much drier then than now, when it was 1 degree C warmer. Thus, food production will likely decline while the sea level rises. Yet, it is the United States that is THE major producer of carbon dioxide, responsible for about 25% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. What, then, is the US doing about the impending climate-related crises likely to emerge in the coming decades? At the moment, the administration of George W. Bush is doing nothing to limit the use of fossil fuels and resultant GHG emissions. It is as if the problem does not exist, and if it does, it is as if the US has no responsibility for it or for the fate of other countries at risk to climate change.

Most recently, Bush and the US Congress, controlled by the Republican Party, have voted to explore in the ANWR for oil. It is interesting to note that Alaskan senators voted for this, along with other fellow senators. However, Alaska is like the proverbial “canary in the coal mine”; that is, a canary would show signs of elevated carbon monoxide levels in a mine in advance of adverse effects on miners. The canary served as an early warning to miners to clear out of the mine in order to avoid being subjected to increasing lethal carbon monoxide levels. Well, according to geophysical scientific research, a 1-degree warming in the mid-latitudes (North America, Eurasia, Japan) means that there will be a 3- to 4-degree warming in the higher latitudes of the polar regions. That means Alaska will be among the first areas to suffer from the impacts of global warming. All for the sake of a few dollars now, Alaskan children will pay the higher price. The irony is that it will be like a cowboy shooting himself in the foot.

A burning question to me is as follows: why would a president bother putting lightning rods on his home where the known risk of a known problem is so small, while continuing to foster policies that will increase the emissions of GHGs into the atmosphere and resultant enhancement of the greenhouse effect: a hotter atmosphere, a known problem with uncertain but adverse impacts that could affect 6 billion people. The probability of the latter is a lot higher than the probablity of the former. Go figure.

It would be laughable if the potential impacts of global warming on the well-being of ecosystems and societies were not projected to be a combination of devastating and, in many instances, unknowable effects.

Fragilecologies Archives
22 March 2005

By Dr. Steven Salmony : Guest Editorial
sesalmony@aol.com
(Dr. Salmony is a concerned global citizen, without expertise in population science.)
Link: Human Carrying Capacity is Determined by Food Availability (R. Hopfenberg)

Imagine for a moment that we are looking at a huge ocean wave, watching it move toward the shore. Think of a tsunami. The wave is moving toward us; however, at the same time, there are many molecules in the wave that are moving in the opposite direction, against the tide. If we observe that the propagation of the global human population is like the wave, and the reproduction numbers of individuals or certain locales are like the molecules, it may be inaccurate for the latter to be looked at as if it tells us something meaningful about the former.

Abundant research indicates that countries like Australia, Italy, and Tunisia, among many others, have recently shown a decline in human population growth. These geographically localized data need not blind us to overwhelming facts that the absolute global population is still growing and may reach 12 billion by the end of this century. Earth Policy Institute data from February 2005 indicate that global numbers will be above 9 billion by 2050. As suggested above, the world population is like a wave; individual or localized reproduction numbers are like the molecules.

Put another way, human propagation data and evidence of reproduction numbers among individuals, even in many places, may be pointing in different directions. Choosing the scope of observation is like deciding to look at either the forest or the individual trees, at either the wave or its molecules. Thus, the global challenge before us is a species propagation problem, in a way unrelated to individual or local counts.

For too long a time, human population growth has been viewed as being somehow outside the course of nature. The possible reasons behind population growth rates and numbers have seemed complex, obscure, numerous, or even unknowable, so that a strategy to address what could be a clear and present danger has been thought to be all but impossible to develop, let alone implement. To have suggested, as many scientists have done, that understanding the dynamics of human population does not matter, that the human population problem is not about numbers, or that human population dynamics have so dizzying an array of variables as not to be suitable for scientific investigation, in a way seems not quite right. Dr. Russell P. Hopfenberg has made it possible for us to grasp human population dynamics as a natural phenomenon and to liberate vital understanding of skyrocketing global population growth from the discombobulated realm of the preternatural.

Hopfenberg gives us empirical data of a non-recursive biological problem that is independent of ethical, social, legal, religious, and cultural considerations. This means human population dynamics are essentially like the population dynamics of other species. It also means that world human population growth is a rapidly cycling positive feedback loop, a relationship between food and population in which food availability drives population growth, and population growth fuels the impression that food production needs to be increased. The data indicate that as we increase food production every year, the number of people goes up, too.

With every passing year, as food production is increased, leading to a population increase, millions go hungry. Why are those hungry millions not getting fed year after year after year… and future generationl of poor people may not ever be fed? Every year the human population grows. All segments of it grow. Every year there are more people growing up well fed and more people growing up hungry. The hungry segment of the global population goes up just like all the other segments of the population. We are not bringing hunger to an end by increasing food production; we are giving rise to more hungry people.

Perhaps a new biological understanding is emerging with Russell Hopfenberg’s research. It is simply this: human population numbers, as is the case with other species, are primarily a function of food availability. Although the human population “explosion” appears to be a huge problem, we can take the measure of it and find a remedy that is consonant with universally shared human values.

Fragilecologies Archives
2 March 2005

A couple of years ago an organization called GLOBE Southern Africa (in Cape Town, South Africa ) prepared a report called Climate Change in Africa. GLOBE stands for Global Legislators Organization for a Balanced Environment. It notes that it is an organization “founded in 1989 with the express aim of enhancing global cooperation between parliamentarians on environmental and sustainable development issues. Its world-wide membership includes over 800 parliamentarians in over 100 countries.”

Most of the articles in the report were written by Africans and for Africans. In the following paragraphs I am presenting the parts of the report that were singled out by the editor for special attention. These are highlighted quotes that summarized the key messages of the writers. Following each quote I provide a few sentences to discuss their meaning from my view.

•  Humans have already increased the levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by more than 30% since the beginning of the industrial revolution and the large-scale use of fossil fuels.

This statement refers to the fact that with the Industrial Revolution that began in the middle of the 1700s there was a sharp increase in burning coal, which produces carbon dioxide, called a greenhouse gas. As a greenhouse gas it helps to heat up the air and therefore increase global climate temperatures. This is called the greenhouse effect. What the burning of coal, oil and natural gas to keep industries operating and homes heated or cooled does is to increase global temperatures beyond what normal climate conditions would be.

The report also noted “20% of the world’s population cannot continue to indiscriminately pollute the atmosphere at the expense of the majority”. It is well known that the industrialized countries are the ones that saturated the atmosphere with a lot of greenhouse gases. This saturation runs the risk of heating up the global temperatures to such an extent that rainfall patterns will change: more droughts in some places, more floods in others, more forest and bush fires and heat waves. All inhabitants of the planet will suffer because of the activities of a few affluent countries. Shouldn’t those countries that saturated the atmosphere with greenhouse gases take the first steps to reduce them?

•  Africa’s contribution to the increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases has been minimal, yet according to the IPCC, Africa is the most vulnerable continent to climate change as widespread poverty severely limits its capabilities to adapt.

The rich industrialized countries have been putting carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere for a couple of hundred years. You can say that their burning of fossil fuels (coal, oil and natural gas) enabled the developed countries of the Northern Hemisphere to become rich and industrial. African production of greenhouse gases has been relatively small and what it does produce is the result of trying to fulfill its basic needs. It is also clear that Africans are relatively poor and they have relatively few resources to cope with the possible bad impacts of climate change on water, food production, human health and other climate-related problems. Africans did not cause the global warming problem that exists today and therefore they deserve help from those countries that did so that they can better cope with global warming’s negative impacts.

•  On the demand side, the most compelling demand for electricity does not seem to come from productive agents [factories] but from households seeking to light the home or communities requiring a decent water supply, means of storing essential medicines, and extended study hours for those in educationÖ

This statement draws attention to the fact that many Africans are struggling to meet their basic needs for food, water, basic energy needs to pump water from wells, to keep medicines and foods refrigerated, for electricity to light up their homes and communities, and so forth. While people in the rich countries decide which gas-consuming cars to buy, Africans are seeking firewood and charcoal to cook their meals. This does not seem very equitable, does it?

Daily trek for water. Ethiopia (photo M.H. Glantz)

•  New York uses more gasoline in a week than the whole of Africa does in a year.

This statement draws attention to the lack of equal conditions in the international community. People in developed countries are using many more resources per person than those in the tropical countries. They use more energy, eat more food, consume more clean water, and have considerably more access to life-saving medicines and more protected personal rights than do many of those on the African continent.

Reinforcing this point, the GLOBE report on Climate Change in Africa noted the following inequities: “There are more cars in Westphalia, Germany, than in the whole of Africa. The US State of Texas alone, with a population of 30 million, emits more CO2 than 93 developing countries added together, with a combined population of nearly one billion people, and nearly three times more CO2 than Brazil” (ECO publication, November 1998).

Such major disparities must be exposed, dealt with and corrected, not with just words and international declarations of desired goals, but with actions.

•  Developed countries should therefore understand that the CDM should not only be an instrument for emissions reduction at least cost, but also an access to sustainable development for developing countries.

The CDM is the Clean Development Mechanism and it refers to the transfer of technologies that reduces greenhouses gas emissions into the air. These new technologies being developed by the rich countries of the Northern Hemisphere, from the United States and Canada to Japan and Korea, should give African countries a chance to get on a path of sustainable development. This means that people today will use their natural resources in a way that leaves them in good condition for the next generations of Africans to use. Rich countries want to sell their clean technologies but African countries cannot afford them.

•  Africa being the most underdeveloped continent does not have opportunities for emissions reduction but certainly does for avoidance of future emissions.

If the rich industrialized countries follow through on their pledges to provide clean technologies to African countries, then there would be a reduction in future emissions of greenhouse gases into the air and would therefore lower the likelihood of large increases in temperature.

•  The uncertainty in data, methodologies or operation of mechanisms is, however, no excuse for Africa to lie dormant while the rest of the world searches for solutions.

Not everyone believes that the global temperatures are increasing because of the burning of coal and other fossil fuels. They do not believe that humans have the ability to change the global temperature. It is easy for a government to decide to do nothing about global warming until all of the doubts about climate change are removed.

There will always be uncertainty and it should not be used as a reason for a government to do nothing to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. Most governments around the world (except the United States — the biggest producer of greenhouse gases, and Australia) are concerned about global warming and its likely impacts (more droughts in some places, more floods in others, new diseases appearing in places they had not existed before, increase in climate-related hazards, more intense and longer lasting heat waves, and so on). African governments need to deal with the global warming issue along with the other crises they are facing from day to day and year to year.

•  The negative impacts of climate change will be felt in Africa a long time before the positive impacts of emission reductions are manifest — as such adaptation is a priority for Africa.

Many years from now scientists will look back to decide if a specific drought, flood, fire or disease outbreak was actually caused by global warming. In the meantime African farmers, water managers, health specialists and disaster managers will continue to make adjustments to seasonal changes that will be occurring even under normal if not changing conditions. To their credit they have been responding to climate variability from season to season and year to year for thousands of years. The climate is always changing. The farmers and herders are always adjusting.

In summary, it is very clear to me that the rich countries that have industrialized their economies owe it to developing countries, and especially those in Africa, to take the first and big step toward stopping their greenhouse gas emissions. They need to help developing countries to “leapfrog” [jump over] those stages of development that would otherwise have to depend heavily on the use of coal, oil and wood, as they try to develop their economies. Rich countries borrowed the clean air (water, forests, and other natural resources) to develop their economies and societies. If they had borrowed money from a bank they would have had to pay back what they borrowed. Why not use the same thinking to get them to pay back Nature by cleaning up the mess they caused?

Fragilecologies Archives
31 January 2005

Guest Editorial: By Dr. Karol Stoker, Longmont, Colorado : Guest Editorial

After reading Bill Berkeley’s excellent assessment of the currents of power and destruction on the African continent, The Graves Are Not Yet Full (New York: Basic Books, 2001), it occurred to me that it would be a simple matter for the casual reader to assume that the entire continent of Africa exists in a state of perpetual turmoil. Nothing could be further from the truth. Mr. Berkeley demonstrates, in a masterful manner, that the tragedies one reads about in the popular press are not inherent to the African continent; rather, they are the result of a century and a half of Western intervention. A majority of the African nations have avoided descending in to the chaos depicted in the media.

I think that this false perception is the result of a number of cultural predispositions, foremost among which is the popular misconception of Africa as a vast, homogeneous entity; I believe, unfortunately, that the American public at large is much more likely to hold this view than is the European population. Obviously this is due in part to the European involvement in the colonial African experience. This view ignores the vast array of ethnic and cultural differences that exist in reality. Secondly, the American press is quite adept at reporting in depth (in vivid color) any African political upheaval. After the fire is extinguished, Africa disappears from the collective American consciousness. The ensuing successes at returning to normalcy are largely ignored. Not very interesting reading, I suppose.

My limited first-hand knowledge of Africa is based upon my travels through Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, Ivory Coast, and Burkina Faso. I’ve worked and traveled in Senegal, but the country I consider to be my second home is the Republic of Mali.

In 1976, I was accepted into the Peace Corps and assigned to Mali as a secondary-level English teacher. I went directly to my World Atlas. Like most Americans, I had a rudimentary knowledge of sub-Saharan Africa, and I suppose I’d heard of Mali a time or two; however, I couldn’t have located it on a map. That portion of the continent was an unknown quantity, an enigma.

Since 1976, I’ve lived and worked (off and on) for a total of three years in my beloved Mali-ba. During my two-year tour of duty with the Peace Corps, I was very fortunate to meet Drs. Roderick and Susan McIntosh, currently at Rice University in Houston, Texas. These two exceptional individuals are dedicated Africanists. As a result of our relationship, I participated in four archaeological projects in Mali. Our efforts up to the present have been concentrated in the Inland Niger Delta, specifically in the area surrounding the venerable city of Jenne, known to the rest of the world primarily for its magnificent Sudanese-style mosque.

Monday market day in front of the mosque, Jenne

The medieval (and later) history of Mali was largely a known quantity in the 1970s. The Empire of Ghana, the foundation fo the Malian Empire by the culture hero Soundiata, and its Golden Age under Mansa Moussa are well represented in the literature, as is the succeeding Songhai Empire and the kingdoms of Segou and Sikasso.

Completed excavation in Jenne proper, with the assembled crew.

The general consensus at the time of our excavations, seemingly based on outdated colonial attitudes, was that, prior to the arrival of Arab-Islamic influence in the Ninth and Tenth Centuries C.E., there was little of interest taking place in sub-Saharan Africa, at least from a cultural perspective. The results of McIntosh’s excavation and survey projects have proven otherwise. The Inland Niger Delta was for centuries a patchwork of major trade centers, such as Jenne-jeno, surrounded by a myriad of specialized satellite communities, all of which contributed to the success of the whole. (See McIntosh, “Finding Jenni-jeno, West Africa’s Oldest City,” National Geographic, September 1982.) The earliest excavated levels at Jenne-jeno date to around 250 B.C.E., with evidence of early rice cultivation and sophisticated metallurgy. The city was surrounded by a massive wall as early as the Fifty Century C.E. These discoveries have led to a greater appreciation of the complexity and importance of prehistoric sub-Saharan Africa.

I well remember the afternoon in February 1997 when I stood at the bottom of a just-completed four-meter-deep excavation at Jenne-jeno addressing a group of 30 or so Malian school teachers who had come at the behest of the Mission Culturelle de Jenne, under the direction of Dr. Boubacar Diaby. I opened my introduction with the statement that at their feet lay 20 centuries of Malian history. The general reaction was of amazement, even disbelief. However, I had the strong impression that, as question followed question, the educators of the next generation would instill a sense of pride in the rich history of Mali to their students.

The typical taxi-brousse, with a full complement, waiting for the “barque” to ferry it across the Bani River to Jenne.

Momentous changes in the fabric of Malian society have taken place in the last 30 years. Worldwide Internet communication is available in all cities and in many villages. Intercity transportation, using modern buses, can be found throughout the country; the old standby, the taxi-brousse, can still be used by those of us who remember the simple joys of traveling for hours on end seated on a wooden bench in the back of a Peugeot pickup, with 20 other travelers, strangers who would become friends. Both the evils and the benefits of an exponentially expanding tourism industry can be observed in all 8 regions of the country, from frenetic Bamako to legendary Tombouctou.

But even as Mali evolves, its people remain the same: unerringly friendly and hospitable, projecting a smiling face to others while enduring unimaginable circumstances. These are the people I like to think I have the honor to call friends and family. I believe Mali serves as the perfect example of the hopeful future that exists throughout the African continent. Mali has left the colonial legacy of suppression and division in the past and has evolved into a vibrant, modern vision of the African future.

“One People, One Presence, One Future,” as the banner reads on the current generation of travel posters.

Fragilecologies Archives
21 December 2004

There’s a new club in town: the Kyoto Club. It was formed in mid-December 2004 in Argentina at a conference of governments meeting to discuss ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to the atmosphere. The Club’s membership is made up of countries whose governments have signed on to the Kyoto Protocol, a legal international accord to cope with the adverse causes and consequences of greenhouse gas emissions to the atmosphere. Policy makers have been working on this Protocol since 1997 and toward it since the early 1990s. To get going, the Club needed a quorum, a minimum number of members. It got that when Russia ‘s President Putin decided to sign on in the fall of 2004. The Protocol goes into force 90 days after ratification by Russia (16 February 2005, to be exact).

Two major greenhouse gas emitters, the USA and Australia, have not signed on to the Kyoto Protocol. In other words, the US government (the Congress as well as the President) has chosen not to join this particular club that now boasts a membership of 129 countries. Australia has followed the lead of the United States, forming a sort of “coalition of the willing,” that is, willing to say no to the Kyoto Protocol and process.

Each of these governments presents its arguments for its unwillingness to tie itself to mandatory steps to reduce CO2 emissions. They challenge the credibility of the global scientific community working on trying to understand the human influences on the global atmosphere. The US is responsible for about 25% of global CO2 emissions. It favors voluntary actions by industry to reduce CO2 emissions. The following headline which, I believe, captures a key expectation of the present-day Bush Administration, appeared in an official US Government press release at the 10th Conference of Parties (COP10) in Buenos Aires in mid-December 2004: Better Technologies Key to Addressing Climate Change.

Carbon dioxide (CO2 ) is called a trace gas, because its amount in the atmosphere is very small, especially when compared to other atmospheric gases. Scientists have learned over the past two centuries that CO2 in the atmosphere is a “greenhouse gas,” that is, it acts like a blanket that traps outgoing longwave radiation and heats up the Earth’s lower atmosphere. Although it is not the only greenhouse gas, it is pervasive. The other greenhouse gases (GHGs) include methane [various natural and human-related sources], nitrous oxides [used in fertilizers], and various CFCs and their equally harmful substitutes).

The funny thing about membership-based clubs is that they have entrance requirements which exclude some potential members while embracing others. Those requirements could be as simple as asking to join the club as a member and as complicated as having to meet many restrictive requirements. For the latter type of membership, potential members have to “do something” or at the least give the appearance of doing something that works toward achieving the club’s mission. For international agreements, a prospective member must agree to the signing onto, and agreeing at least in theory to abide by, the regulations and guidelines.

It is necessary to keep in mind that not all those governments that ratified the Kyoto Protocol did so because they believed the scientific reports that blame human activities for recent warming trends. Some have likely signed on to be a part of the Kyoto process with the purpose of acting as a “fifth column” (that is, to act as potential obstructionists if deliberations threaten their national interests). They will try to slow down progress toward mandatory regulations that call for large cuts in a nation’s CO2 emissions.

The In’s and Out’s of COP10

It seems that we are entering a new stage in the global warming problematique. I believe that the formation of the Kyoto Club has created overnight (at COP 10 in Argentina in mid December 2004) a “glass wall,” a barrier of sorts, between members of the Club who profess that their countries will abide by the rules and regulations, mission and goals of the Protocol and those who have chosen to pay no attention to it. The difference between these two groups is the following: While Kyoto Club members may not reach their stated goals to reduce CO2 emissions, they have pledged at least to try. To the public at large, these countries are trying to deal with a potentially dangerous environmental problem of global proportions.

USA defaults on climate policy leadership to Ö the Kyoto Club

The campaign button to the right was handed out at the COP10 meeting. It is a fabricated image. President Bush did not really write or hold up such a message for all to see. The interesting thing about the button, whether one agrees with its message or not, is that the US Government has been singled out as THE obstructionist to global attempts to deal with the global warming issue.

The US (along with Australia) has been against placing any mandatory limits on their emissions of GHGs. Opposition to limits has been its guiding theme in how the US has treated the Kyoto Protocol process, as well as to the scientific findings that are driving (actually, accelerating) the Kyoto process. Those findings have come not only from modeling efforts but from observations of changes everywhere as well, such as glaciers melting just about everywhere on the globe. However, there are direct and indirect, obvious and not-so-obvious, consequences for not joining the Kyoto Club.

The Club’s members have taken over the global leadership position on climate and global change issues. How then will this impact US participation in future deliberations on global warming? Will the US be able to influence the process as a powerless onlooker—an outsider, as opposed to as an active Club member?

There is a new dimension of the global warming issue on the horizon that is a direct result of the US decision not to sign on to Kyoto. The dimension that I am concerned about as an American citizen is as follows: with the creation of the Kyoto Club, there will be a subtle, creeping but steady, shift of blame for the occurrence, as well as damage, of weather and climate-related disasters. Instead of blaming global warming on industrialized nations in general for the adverse impacts of global warming (GHG emissions), people will increasingly blame the US for specific environmental changes and disasters as they occur around the globe.

The ëblame game’ begins

The process of blame has in fact already begun. For example, at COP10 Argentinean reporters blamed the melting of South American glaciers on the US, because of its uncontrolled emissions of GHGs. It is not that other countries are not implicated in the global warming of the atmosphere; after all, it’s the combined amount of CO2 and other GHGs that are responsible for the warming. However, in the eye of the public, it will be increasingly apparent that the Kyoto Club membership—129 of them at present—as a whole (and despite the lack of commitment by some members) is trying to do something about it. For its part, the US has not yet chosen to treat the problem as an urgent and serious issue of planetary survival.

Those who care even slightly about the fate of the planet and about the well-being of present and future generations should worry about the mounting criticism of the US as being THE major obstacle to resolving the global warming problem. The US will be blamed for just about every bad climate- or weather-related problem that takes place on the planet, e.g., this flood or that drought was caused by America’s greenhouse gas emissions. US scientists have already suggested that global warming worsened the severity of recent drought in the US. Tuvalu and other Pacific Island nations are planning to sue the industrialized countries for global warming-related sea level rise that would eventually submerge their territory. For example, a report on the Internet (8 October 04) at www.disasterrelief.org was based on the political activities captured in the following headline: Tiny Pacific Islands to Sue Over Global Warming.

The Inuit in the Arctic region are also planning to sue the US government for destroying their culture as a result of CO2 emission-related environmental changes within the northern latitudes. Their concern is for the well being of humans, ecosystems and wildlife, as suggested in this BBC webline: “Beaches turning to mud and changes in wildlife are among the signs of a warming climate recorded by an Inuit community in Canada.” It is therefore foreseeable that the blame for the impacts of environmental changes in climate sensitive regions, ecosystems or activities is very likely going to be directed toward the biggest single greenhouse gas emitting nation, the United States .

Many scientific studies based on a variety of research methods including climate model projections suggest that there will be an increase in the frequency as well as intensity of extreme events (droughts, floods, tropical storms, disease outbreaks), as the atmosphere warms. It is conceivable that, eventually, several of those damage claims are likely to morph into legal cases with the USA as the defendant.

The ugly scenario that I see emerging is that the intensified blame of the United States for global warming will enable other major greenhouse gas emitters (polluters) to avoid being scrutinized for their emissions levels. The public opinion spotlight will fall increasingly on the United States as being responsible for the global warming problem. From an international cooperation perspective, many countries see the US government as acting irresponsibly, kind of like the free child described in the 1960s in transactional analysis terms: “I want what I want when I want it.”

The US President has gone out of his way to made it a point not to lead Americans and people in other countries on this issue. The US Congress has followed the lead of President Bush. Nevertheless, it is increasingly clear that many Americans, companies, and city governments want to take effective concrete steps toward arresting, and then rolling back, the country’s greenhouse gas emissions. Steps to limit greenhouse gas emissions by, say, the State of California can have a greater impact than those actions taken by many national governments with smaller economies.

Certain phrases come to mind: “Pay now or pay later” and “a stitch in time saves nine.”The US pubic will eventually have to bear the costs of abstaining from involvement in the Kyoto process and from the likely impacts of global warming in at least the following two ways:

(1) US goods could become blocked from international trade activities, if the manufacturing processes required to produce those goods surpass the GHG emission restrictions that are sure to be established by the members of the Kyoto Club;

(2) Cleaning up after disasters will likely be much more costly than the costs that would be incurred by trying to prevent or mitigate their impacts.

There is also a third-—hidden—cost that Americans have already begun to pay: the shame of having turned our political and ethical back on the rest of the globe, as other governments wrestle with a global warming of the planet’s atmosphere to temperature levels that have not been witnessed for thousands if not tens of thousands of years.

In a way, it is like going to a casino to gamble: in order to play you have to pay. The US has chosen at this point in time not to relinquish any control over its greenhouse gas emissions to the Kyoto club. As a result, it will have considerably less influence on the decisions made by the club, decisions that may be come binding for many countries around the globe.

Fragilecologies Archives
18 November 2004

The title for this editorial came to me while I was playing tennis. The question I asked myself was the following: What is it that makes good climates go bad? That random question passing through my mind sparked another question: what does it mean to have a “good” climate. A Google search for “good climate” identified many websites with “good climate” in their weblines. However, the climate they were referring to almost totally was the atmosphere for carrying out a good business arrangement, a good climate for studying, working or carrying out a wide range of activities. In a way one might view the physical atmosphere in general and the climate more specifically as the appropriate environment that allows for the carrying out of favored activities.

I want to identify explicitly the suite of physical and societal factors that can affect climate at various geographic scales (from local to sub-national regional to national to supra-national regional to global) and time scales (months to millennia). In the midst of this effort it became clear to me that still missing (to my mind) is a better understanding of what one might mean by a “good climate”.

If there is such a thing as a good climate, then there must also be a “bad climate”. But, are these notions objectively or subjectively determined? Obviously both. Humans are usually egocentric, anthropocentric, genero-centric (focused on their generation). Most individuals have preferences for types of climate conditions they would like to see prevail. Societies and cultures and generations also have their preferences as well, and their varied preferences are not necessarily congruent. A place has a certain climate at a given point in time. If one does not like it, he or she has the option to move to a different, more preferred climate setting, assuming they have the economic wherewithal to do so. Even settlements try to alter the climate setting in which they exist through such climate modification practices as the use of heating or air conditioning, through irrigation practices (bringing abundant water to arid places), through attempts at climate modification (by forcing precipitation out of the atmosphere), and so forth.

The above paragraph suggests that there is a climate condition in-between good and bad. It has no official name but it could be referred to as a “tolerable climate”, that is, one to which adjustments have been made, psychologically, socially and technologically.

What does it mean for a good climate to “go bad”?

American longshoreman-philosopher Eric Hoffer wrote in 1952 in his book “Ordeal of Change” about how people fear change. Our grandparents lived through harsh winters and hot summers, usually without the benefits of heat or air conditioning. They just did it. No real options. Today we have milder winters and no-so-bad summers. We also have all the accoutrements of an affluent industrialized society. We wouldn’t think of moving to Arizona to a home with no air conditioning or to Maine to a cabin with no heat. Anything that changes our respective climate would likely have caused or will cause a problem because it would mean we would eventually have to change our behavior in ways we don’t really know. So, one could argue that perceptible changes are in general examples of a climate “going bad”. Less rain or more rain for one’s crops, depending on one’s location, activities and crop type, could signal a climate going “bad”. Cloudier days, sunnier days, drier days or more humid days to someone or to some activity could be perceived as a climate going bad.

What then is a bad climate? It is one in which individuals and ecosystems as well as human settlements are unable to survive in a sustainable way over a long period of time. While some individuals may have the fortitude and economic well being to move to a more favorable climate, most people do not have that option. They have to live under the climate regime into which they were born. Bad climate can also be created for settlements when governments engage in forced migration. This has been done in many countries around the globe for a variety of reasons: British prisoners were exiled to Australia; American Indians put on inhospitable reservations; Ethiopian farmers resettled from their highlands to swampy lowlands, Somali’s desert nomads placed in coastal fishing villages, Tibetan refugees resettled in the Swiss Alps; and so on. Each of the communities relocated had to cope with new environmental and climatic conditions, whether they liked it or not. Little effort is given to identify similar environmental or climatic settings for the displaced people and settlements. They are forced to adapt and abruptly adjust to their new conditions.

What constitutes a good climate?

Eskimos live in cold climate conditions; desert nomads live in hot dry climates. People in tropical rainforests live in what many in other ecosystems would call oppressively sweltering humidity and heat. Each of these populations in these respective climate regimes may consider them as “good climate” but they are very different. Most likely, it would not be possible to encourage any one of them to move to the other’s climate setting. Even moving from a rural to urban setting can be troublesome for those who have been forced by circumstances to do so.

As an inhabitant of the middle latitudes, I look at polar, desert and tropical climates and consider them to be too extreme for me. In other words they are not what I would subjectively consider to be good climates. Technology can change that by using heat in the cold regions and air conditioning in the hot ones. People are adaptable to changing environmental conditions. Today we have adjusted unwittingly to slowly changing climatic conditions where we live. Our grandparents tell us that the winters of decades ago were much colder and snowier than they are today. The kids don’t know that as a fact because they have been brought up in the incrementally altered climate. Older people experience the cumulative affect of those changes. Nevertheless, there are still major climatic differences in regions around the globe and more specifically in North America .

For example, in the United States, people who live in the arid southwest look down on the cold wet climate of the Northeastern United States during winter. People in Florida may consider the climate of the southwest as too dry and from their perceived needs, not a good climate to live in during summer. People do migrate voluntarily from one climate regime to another, based solely on the desire to live in a good climate while escaping from what they consider to be a bad one. Most people cannot escape from the climate regimes into which they had been born. To them the idea or a “good climate” or a “bad climate” is irrelevant. They live in a tolerable climate, one to which their expectations and their behavior have become accustomed. Climate just is what it is where they live with little hope of escaping or changing it. So, there may be climate regimes under which we would like to live — the ideal climate to suit our personalities and needs — and those under which we do live and tolerate. Eco-tourism, which could be construed as escaping to the desired climate even if only for a few days or weeks, is one way we expose our preferences toward the climate regime we might like. Visiting a perceived “ideal” climate is one thing. Living in it forever is another. American novelist John Steinbeck once wrote, “I’ve lived in good climate and it bores the hell out of me. I like weather rather than climate.”

There has been considerable talk in the past two and a half decades about global warming (and before then a decade of talk about global cooling). At first discussions centered at the international level on prevention of those factors that are enhancing the naturally occurring greenhouse effect. Later talk shifted to adaptation, given the apparent inability of the international community to work together to freeze the global climate regime the way it is today (which by the way is favorable to some, unfavorable to others, and only tolerable to yet others). Prevention vs. adaptation frames societal responses as being only black-white, positive-negative, all or nothing. There are other types of societal responses, the ones that individuals and societies engage in all the time (so simple as to be overlooked): adjustment, acclimatization, become accustomed to.

One way to look at what might be a “good climate” is to define it as one where there is no change in the climatic parameters from what the current (living) generations expect that are perceived by a society to be central to its collective notion of “good”. Expectations change slowly because changes in climate are so incremental and slowly occurring that their expectations are being adjusted often unwittingly at a similar incremental and slow pace (climate is changing all the time and on all time and space scales). Clearly, what constitutes a good climate can be determined objectively, e.g., in that climate has a real geophysical component as well as societal and psychological (e.g., subjective) components. For example, ten percent more precipitation in an arid area may not be beneficial depending on when and where it fell. Good climate, then, from a societal and psychological perspective can be viewed as being in the eyes of the beholder. Also we can view the “goodness” or “badness” of climate either from an individual’s perspective or from a societal perspective, keeping in mind that individuals or groups of them make decisions for society as a whole. So, individual perceptions of what a good climate might be or of a bad climate to avoid still have an influence on decisions that affect an entire society, regardless of their personal climate preferences.

While we can question what it means to have a good, bad or tolerable climate, there are real characteristics of a climate that can be measured — temperature, precipitation, humidity, etc. — and matched to appropriate human activities. Those characteristics can change at different rates of speed in different locations. Whether humans can adjust to those rates and changes without disruption will vary from place to place and from time to time even in the same place.

It is also possible to identify human activities that can alter the chemistry and the behavior of the atmosphere. Human activities have done so on a local scale and on a global scale. Thus, some of the reasons that good climate go bad are natural and others are anthropocentric. Each is briefly discussed in the following sections.

Geophysical reasons why good climates go bad

There are many geophysical reasons why good climates go bad. Such reasons seem to get the lion’s share of the public’s attention. For example, eons ago, continental drift also affected the circulation of the atmosphere and the climate of the continents. A series of volcanic eruptions could alter climate for extended periods of time long enough to disrupt human activities and ecosystems. There are other theories related to natural geophysical changes in the Earth’s climate and environment. These are just some of the reasons that can make a good climate go bad.

For the woolly mammoths a good climate was one to which they had become accustomed to but one which changed on them because of natural factors. It was the end of the Ice Age. The Earth’s orbit shifted in ways that affected the Earth’s climate, as suggested by Serbian astronomer Milankovitch many decades ago. Changes in solar activity are also among the natural processes that can affect the Earth’s atmosphere, such as changes in the Solar Constant or in the number of sunspots on the surface of the sun (the latter has been associated with changes in climate on the Earth’s surface).

In the last millennium the Earth’s inhabitants witnessed a centuries-long warming called the Little Optimum from about 1000 to 1350 AD or so. They also witnessed the Little Ice Age that lasted a few centuries from the 1500s until about 1850. These were natural changes in the global atmosphere and climate regime. Also, of great importance is the fact that hu man activities in the past thousand years began to affect climate, at first on local levels and increasingly, by the end of this time period, on a global scale.

How humans make good climates go bad

We tend to blame the climate system for its anomalies and outlying extremes or even rare events. But perhaps societies and their leaders are all too eager to blame something or someone else for the damages (death, sickness and destruction) caused by those anomalies. Human activities from local to national can affect the climate regimes under which they operate.

As a first example, scientists have identified human influences on the climate and weather of metropolitan areas. They have labeled the results of this influence as the “urban heat island” effect. It works this way: the concrete and asphalt surfaces that dominate metropolitan areas along with the widespread use of fossil fuels (coal, oil, natural gas) and because of innumerable heating and cooling systems in high concentration has led to the heating up of an invisible bubble of warm air that encompasses the urban area. This is an example of humans altering the climate in the place where they have chosen to settle. In addition, the influence of the heat island on precipitation within the bubble can be great with storms, for example, dropping more moisture on the metropolitan areas. The heat island also has impacts downwind in suburban and rural areas, apparently by increasing precipitation in those areas.

On a regional scale, human activities have been identified that have led to major changes in regional climate regimes. One example of the foreseeability of such an impact can be found in the Amazon basin of South America. This basin is of major interest to people and governments worldwide for a variety of physical, biological and social factors. Deforestation rates in the basin are quite high, and there is considerable fear that not only will the soils in the basin be negatively affected, but so too will the atmosphere above it.

Some writers have, correctly or incorrectly, referred to the Amazon rainforest, the largest in the world, as being “the lungs of the Earth”; it stores carbon dioxide, a major greenhouse gas of concern, and is a major source of oxygen. Cutting down the forest reduces, at an admittedly incremental but cumulative pace, the rainforest’s effectiveness as a sink for atmospheric carbon dioxide. With the burning of the rainforest, it becomes a source of CO2 as well. Of more immediate concern though, is that researchers have found that about half of the rain that falls in the Amazon basin comes from evaporation and transpiration from the rainforest itself in a self-perpetuating water recycling process. To cut down trees in the forest is to chip away at the amount of precipitation that can be expected to fall within the basin. This would eventually reduce soil moisture, river flow quantity and quality, and even human habitability in the region in ways that can not only be imagined but can already be seen around the globe on small scales.

For another example of regional climate change induced as a result of human activities, one can look at the Aral Sea in Central Asia. The Aral Sea was the fourth largest inland sea in the world as of 1960. Today, it has dropped over 22 meters and has separated into two parts. Its demise is directly attributed to political decisions to divert water from the basin’s two major rivers feeding the sea and to put that river water on dry but potentially fertile desert soils. Studies now show that, as a result of the desiccation of the Aral Sea and the resulting increase in exposure of large expanses of the sandy seabed (a change in land surface albedo [reflectivity]), the winters have gotten colder, and the summers hotter.

Books have been written about how civilizations have misused their land by deforesting, over-cultivating or overgrazing vulnerable ecosystems. North Africa, for example, was once considered to have been the granary of the Roman Empire. Some historians blame the now-existing desert landscape along the southern Mediterranean on deforestation and on poor land use practices for cultivation. Others blame it on a major natural change to the region’s climate regime. Most likely both were contributing factors — but in what proportion?

There is also a general belief — some say blind faith — that what humans have done that is bad for the environment or climate, it can un-do. All it will take is engineering know-how and technological innovation. As a result, throughout history there have been attempts to restore changed climate conditions to their original state. Climate modification schemes have been proposed to bring rainfall, for example, back to arid lands where it had once been. The planting of trees has been a popular idea fostered by European foresters to bring rain back. Others have hypothesized that “rainfall” tends to follow the plow, e.g., cultivation practices.

That brings us to the topic of the day — global warming. I do believe that the by-product of human activities can alter the chemistry of the Earth’s atmosphere in ways that will slowly but profoundly affect societies worldwide. The emission of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere in ever increasing amounts since the onset of the Industrial Revolution in the mid 1700s (i.e., the emissions of carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, methane and various types of CFCs) has enhanced the naturally occurring greenhouse effect. The consequence has been the warming up of the global climate average by 0.7 deg C since the beginning of the 1900s. While there is controversy over various scientific aspects of the global warming phenomenon (is it human-induced or is it a natural occurrence?), evidence has been mounting over the past several decades that it is foreseeable that human activities are at play in heating up the planet.

Concluding thoughts

Societies, and especially those leaders in charge of political and economic decision making, are always on a slippery slope (so to speak), as far as living with the climates they have inherited from their predecessors is concerned. Those decision makers have to make decisions about the future as well as present-day use of and need for water, energy, food, public health and safety in the absence of full knowledge of future climate conditions. We know that climate varies naturally on a range of time scales from weeks and months to years, decades, centuries and millennia. Societal activities need to match those extremes (highs and lows) in variability; they need to juggle their activities against recurrent but aperiodic droughts and floods and against quasi-periodic episodes of El Niño and La Niña. However, with only crude insights into the future, they ride that variability imperfectly. That allows for the entrance of activities that can harm the land surface and the atmosphere above it. Societies need a better idea about what it means to have a good, bad or tolerable climate, as their leaders sit around a table pondering whether, if not what, to do about the global warming (climate change) that is on-going today. An ever-increasing number of researchers accept the possibility that human activities (industrial and agricultural) can alter the chemical composition of the air which will change our climate.

Fragilecologies Archives
23 September 2004

As researchers interested in how climate and human activities interact, some colleagues and I have for the past few years been thinking about and starting to research the notion of “superstorms.” We were attracted to the idea of superstorms because someone for whatever reason happened to label a severe winter storm in North America in mid-March 1993 as a “super” storm. We wondered why. Was it because of the intensity of the event? Was it because of the impacts on society that it caused? Was it because the media might have been seeking to grab the attention of the public on an otherwise uneventful news week? [N.B: As far as we can tell, it was the Weather Channel that first referred to this particular winter storm as a superstorm].

Climate scientists have been telling the world that, accompanying a global warming of the climate system, there would likely be an increase in the frequency and intensity of extreme meteorological events. They have also suggested that there would likely be a change in the geographic range of those extremes, such as droughts, floods, frosts, fires, and severe storms including summer, winter and tropical storms. This reinforced our interest in the notion of a superstorm.

METEOSAT infrared satellite photo March 1993 “Storm of the Century” (13 March 1993). Source: NOAA National Climatic Data Center

In 2004 forecasters at the US National Weather Service developed an index for rating such winter storms for their level of severity. As luck would have it for our research, the 1993 wintertime superstorm turned out to have been the worst winter storm (#1) in the United States 1950-2000.

My colleagues and I decided that, by focusing our research on various physical and societal aspects of this particular storm, we could use it to not only understand the superstorm and its impacts but also to foster the cooperation of researchers interested in various aspects of weather, climate, climate change, and climate forecasting as well as the societal impacts of each of them.

Weather researchers and forecasters can review the cascade of weather forecasts that stemmed from the original 5-day forecast. Climate researchers and modelers can use Superstorm ’93 in their study of seasonal variability and extremes. Climate change researchers can focus on whether this is the kind ofevent that is more likely to occur with greater intensity in the future. Social scientists can use this to study societal responses to forecasts and to impacts of both the forecast and of the impacts on people and the built environment. They can also use it to check how well societal responses were before — and after — the superstorm struck.

In retrospect, most people agree that the forecast of the mid-March superstorm 5 days in advance of its onset was considered to have been very correct and timely. In other words, it was truly a weather forecasting success story. However, as the superstorm moved eastward, some of the forecasts that followed were not as good. Florida, for example, was hit by severe winds, heavy rains, a storm surge and coastal flooding. While Floridians expect and are used to a hurricane season (June to November) and to named tropical storms, they are less aware of severe, out-of-season storms. As a result of the storm’s death toll and destruction in Florida, the storm was called the “No Name” storm. The public as well as the forecasters were caught by surprise. Today, they keep an eye open for such storms and are less likely to be surprised by a similar one in the future.

As I write this commentary, we are in the middle of the 2004 hurricane season in the Atlantic and the typhoon season in the Pacific. Countries along the western boundary currents in both the tropical and sub-tropical Atlantic and Pacific oceans are under a continued threat from tropical storms of high intensity, high frequency, storms that seem to be following along a certain trajectory. In other words, not only are devastating tropical storms occurring within a broad geographically defined area, but a significant subset of them seem to get locked into a certain track that leads them to make landfall in approximately the same locations. I believe that this is an aspect of tropical storms that has not been highlighted as yet either in global warming studies or in weather studies.

Tokage typhoon, October 2004 (AP Photo)

We now know that there have been ten typhoons so far this year that have had negative impacts on Taiwan, for example. We have also witnessed that three major tropical storms hit some part of Florida in less than six weeks, causing billions of dollars in damage and scores of deaths. Is this a unique occurrence?

Aside from whether this tropical storm season turns out to have been a one-of-a-kind unique occurrence, or whether it portends of an emerging new pattern of tropical storms, one can ask what such a storm tendency, e.g., lots of devastating — some might say “blockbuster” — storms means for political, economic and social impacts and responses of affected countries in the future?

What is being suggested here is that the tropical storms of 2004 in the Pacific and Atlantic foreshadow the possibility of a new normal (that is, average) seasonal phenomenon that might be labeled as “superstorm seasons.”

Climate varies from season to season, year to year, and decade to decade.We must now think about the possibility of a new kind of hurricane or typhoon season, one in which there are numerous superstorm events in succession. Even though a local, state, or national society might well be able to cope today with a single such event in a season, maybe even two of them, it might start to think about what it might need to prepare for, as well as respond to, multiple superstorms within a few weeks and within the same geographic location.

Hence, the tropical storms of 2004 in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans have expanded the original notion of the superstorm from one focused only on a single isolated event to one that raises the specter of superstorm seasons.

Regardless of one’s views about the global warming issue, it can, we believe, be argued convincingly that what has happened in the recent past could likely happen again. That means that societies (their researchers and their political leaders at the least) must begin to take such a likelihood into their strategic development and disaster avoidance planning processes.

Fragilecologies Archives
9 September 2004

When I studied African politics about 40 years ago with visiting Lincoln University professor John Marcum at the University of Pennsylvania, Lake Chad was immense in surface area. It was the fourth largest inland water body on the African continent. The lake’s surface area in 1963 was about 25000 square kilometers. The lake is very shallow, on the order of 5 to 8 m deep. Its waters provided livelihoods for fishermen as well as for settlements, cultivators and herders. The Chari and the Longone rivers are the major ones that feed the lake, a land-locked lake with no outlet to the oceans.

“The lake is shared by Cameroon, Chad, Nigeria and Niger which, along with CAR (Central African Republic), make up the Lake Chad Basin Commission (LCBC), whose name in French is the Commission du Bassin du Lac Tchad (CBLT). Its basin extends over 967,000 sq km and is home to about 20 million people, according to LCBC. These include 11.7 million in Nigeria, 5.0 million in Chad, 2.5 million in Cameroon, 634,000 in the CAR and 193,000 in Niger” (www.irinnews.org; March 21, 2003).

The Lake Chad Basin Commission is an organization designed to manage the basin and to resolve disputes that might arise over the lake and its resources.

Being on the fringe of the Sahara, high temperatures assure that evaporation rates of the lake’s water would be high (estimated at 2000mm/year). Rainfall (about 1500mm/year in the south and 100mm in the north of the basin) has been another source of its water.

Today, the surface area of the lake barely reaches 1350 square kilometers. According to a BBC news report (March 24, 2004), “Nigeria’s president has warned that Lake Chad will soon disappear unless immediate action is taken.” Once the fourth-largest African lake (and the sixth largest lake in the world), today, is on its way to extinction.

The levels of the lake have fluctuated over decades, centuries and millennia, responding to changes in the global temperature and regional precipitation. There was a time in history when Lake Chad was so huge that contemporary historians refer to it as Mega-Chad. At other times it may have even come close to disappearing. But these changes have more or less been on long time scales and were clearly caused by natural changes in the climate system. All that has changed in the modern era. Human activities in the lake’s watershed require that increasing amounts of water be withdrawn for dam construction, irrigation activities and other purposes. At the same time as the population’s demand for water is increasing, the climate in the region has been changing in ways that have apparently not been seen in a thousand years or more.

The recent drying out of the lake apparently started in the 1960s and has continued for almost two decades. This drying out was primarily because of severe meteorological drought (that is, reduced rainfall for well over a decade) and continued high temperatures both of which are natural factors. In fact the surface area of the lake declined by more than 20% during West Africa’s disastrous Sahelian drought from 1968-73. By the 1980s and 1990s, however, water from the rivers that flow into the lake was being diverted in increasing amounts for irrigation purposes. It is estimated that about one-third of the streamflow today is diverted from the Chari River before its flow reaches Lake Chad.

Diversion of streamflow had been at a relatively low level, until the late 1970s when Lake Chad basin countries began to sharply intensify their food and fiber (e.g., cash crop) production efforts. According to UNEP GRID, “between 1953 and 1979, irrigation had only a modest impact on the Lake Chad ecosystem. Between 1983 and 1994, however, irrigation water use increased four-fold. About 50% of the decrease in the lake’s size since the 1960s is attributed to human water use, with the remainder attributed to shifting climate patterns.”

www.unep.org/vitalwater/27.htm

Clearly, the lake’s fishermen have been greatly affected by the shrinkage of the lake. However, some farmers have benefited because the seabed where the lake had receded has favorable soil moisture for agricultural production and livestock rearing. Pastoralists have been forced due to the drying out of the lake to move their herds to the wetter south, putting them and their herds in conflict with farmers. There are serious environmental problems to contend with: soil salinization, invasion of unwanted vegetative species, increasing water demands for irrigation and loss of fisheries, along with an increase in poverty.

The continued existence of the lake even into the not-so-distant future is not assured. Population pressures for water, land and food will continue to mount. Water in the region will increasingly become even more scarce than it is at present. And, the regional impacts of global warming of the atmosphere have as yet to be identified, although many researchers believe that the first signs of global warming have already appeared in the area surrounding Lake Chad. A recent report on climate change and the hydrologic cycle suggested, “Of all the major basins in the world, probably Lake Chad has been affected most by climate change” (www.fao.org/docrep/W5183E/w5183e04.htm).

Governments dependent on Lake Chad water have appealed for international support to replenish the lake. The Science-in-Africa web site (Africa’s first online science magazine) reported that “The project — in English ‘Lake Chad Replenishment Project’ — would entail damming the Oubangui River at Palambo in the Central African Republic (CAR) and channeling some of its water through a navigable canal to Lake Chad. It is a large-scale project which requires heavy resources,” according to Niger’s Minister of Environmental and Hydraulic Affairs, Adamou Namata. At least there is a desire on the part of some governments in the Lake Chad basin to “Save the Lake” (www.scienceinafrica.co.za/2003/march/chad.htm).

www.worldlakes.org/lakedetails.asp?lakeid=8357

The Aral Sea: A disappearing sea in Central Asia

Thousands of miles away in Central Asia, it is possible to see the harbinger of Lake Chad’s future, if no changes in trends in water use occur. The Aral Sea is sandwiched between two deserts. Forty years ago, the Aral was, ironically for this comparison, the fourth-largest inland body of water in the world. Today, after only four decades of accelerated human exploitation of the Aral Basin’s water resources, the sea (really a lake without an outlet to the world’s oceans) is well in its way to extinction. Two countries share the sea, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, both of which are downstream from the rivers. The Aral Sea basin contains parts of several countries through which Central Asia’s two major rivers flow, the Amudarya and the Syrdarya. These two rivers are the lifelines for water inflow to the Aral Sea. The upstream states through which the rivers flow include Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Afghanistan. Turkmenistan has a major canal that withdraws a disproportionate share of Amudarya water before it reaches Uzbekistan’s irrigation diversion canals and farmlands.

As with Lake Chad, human activities in the region had expanded sharply since 1960, and the demands on streamflow diversions from these rivers intensified. It has intensified to the extent that, since the late 1970s, there have been many years when the flow of one or both of these rivers never made it to the sea. As a result, the level of the Aral declined steadily since then. The region had been the major cotton-producing region for the Soviet Union and, after the breakup of the USSR, cotton production continued to be a mainstay of Uzbekistan’s economy.

The Aral Sea level has dropped about 20m since 1960, primarily as a result of increased diversions from the Amudarya and Syrdarya rivers for irrigation purposes.

An Uzbek Government poster display showing the declining levels of the Aral Sea over the last several decades. Photo by M.H. Glantz, taken in Nukus, Karakalpakstan, Uzbekistan in September 1995.

The influence of human activities in the Aral, unlike the situation with Lake Chad, has been the major reason behind the declining sea level over the part 40 years or so. The water of the two major rivers that feed the Aral Sea has increasingly been diverted away from the sea are directed toward the desert soils primarily for cotton production. Combining this reduction of flow into the sea with high evaporation rates and low precipitation levels over the sea, the level of the sea had to drop.

Kazakhstan’s leaders decided to save the northern part of the Aral, called the Little Aral. The larger Aral to the south has since divided into eastern and western parts with the shallow eastern part on the edge of complete desiccation. The lucrative commercial fishing industry that once supported 60,000 people had been brought to a halt, as the quality and quantity of the seawater changed for the worse and the commercial fish populations disappeared. Poverty and out migration increased, as did illness and desertification processes in the region surrounding the sea. Salinity of the irrigated soils has been a major problem leading at first to an increase in the amount of water needed to flush the salts from the soil and in many cases to land abandonment followed by an increase in the number of dust storms.

Concluding Thought

The demise of these two lakes in different parts of the globe can be very instructive. One of the lakes has pretty much disappeared as a result of human factors (the Aral) and the other is disappearing as the combined result of overuse of river water and of a drier climate regime. While it is not too late to correct the situation in the Lake Chad region, it is likely too late for the Aral as the economy of Uzbekistan is over dependent on river diversions for cotton production. Many of the processes in both lake regions involving humans have been similar: out migration, land abandonment, loss of wetlands, loss of flora and fauna, desertification, invasion of unwanted species, loss of livelihoods, increases in irrigation, and so forth.

If they have not already done so, it may be wise for the managers of the Lake Chad basin to revisit the recent demise of the Aral Sea in order to gain a better glimpse of where their lake ecosystem and people dependent on it are headed, under a “business as usual scenario,” that is, if there is no change in the direction of current water use decisions.

These two lake situations reinforce my belief that when it comes to environmental changes the future for some places already exists elsewhere on the globe. The Aral scenario seems to be Lake Chad’s future. The big question that demands an honest answer is this: Do the governments associated with the Lake Chad basin’s water supply and demand situation care enough to save the Lake?

Lake Chad Basin Commission

The four countries bordering Lake Chad — Cameroon, Chad, Niger, and Nigeria — created the Lake Chad Basin Commission in 1964. They were joined in 1994 by the Central African Republic, which more than doubled the area of the new Lake Chad Conventional Basin, from 427,300 km² to nearly 1 million km². The aims of the commission are to regulate and control the use of water and other natural resources in the basin and to initiate, promote, and coordinate natural resource development projects and research.

Given the communal nature of the basin’s resources, the commission also promotes mechanisms for settling disputes and enhancing regional cooperation. The results of its 1988 – 92 border demarcation exercise were endorsed by the heads of the member States at their annual meeting in 1994.
Source: www.fews.net/risk/report/?gcid=1000073&f=al&d=0&i=1020

Aral Sea Basin Program

The objective of the Aral Sea Basin Program (ASBP) Water and Environmental Management Project is to address the root causes of the overuse and degradation of the international waters of the Aral Sea Basin by assisting the Central Asian States in implementing the Strategic Action Program (SAP). Four specific objectives are: (a) stabilizing the environment; (b) rehabilitating the disaster zone around the Sea; (c) improving the management of international waters; and (d) building the capacity of the regional institutions.

Source: World Bank

Fragilecologies Archives
2 September 2004

Coups, corruption, colonialism, conflict, Cold War and climate have, at one time or another, plagued countries in sub-Saharan Africa. African leaders with the support of their citizens and the concerted effort of the international community need to cope more swiftly and effectively with the influences of these six “Cs” on the ability of their countries to develop sustainably.

In the early 1500s English playwright William Shakespeare wrote in his play “Hamlet” “To be on not to be: that is the question. Whether t’is nobler in the mind to suffer slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing, end them.”

So, 500 years ago Shakespeare pointed out to his audience that the common people either accept what their governments dish out to them, or find ways to oppose the negative influences of government on society and on their lives. Let’s look more closely at the 6 Cs noted above.

Coups
– Several governments over the past few decades have fallen because of military coups. These abrupt takeovers of political power by a group of soldiers, however non-violent, still cause insecurity as well as instability within the country as well as the likelihood of spilling over into neighboring countries. In cases where rulers have legitimately been chosen to govern, many of them have chosen to stay in power beyond their legitimate authority, with resulting adverse effects on their decision-making. In fact, very few political leaders in Africa, since the late 1950s have stepped down from power voluntarily. There are some notable exceptions: Leopold Senghor of Senegal; Julius Nyerere of Tanzania: Nelson Mandela of South Africa. Coups continue. The Cote d’Ivoire is among the latest examples of the devastating aftermath of a coup. Equally as devastating to African people are the coup attempts that fail. They too have negative impacts on their well-being.

Corruption
– For decades, donors as well as local people have been well aware of corruption in Africa in one form or another. Corruption can be at a relatively low level in the form of baksheesh, or bribery; some extra money changes hands to get a visa in time or to get access to services run by the government (telephone, electricity, etc). Seemingly small amounts of money for bribes to get things done can be difficult for someone in Africa to deal with, because of the low level of earnings of the general population. Much more serious problems of corruption relate to the large-scale robbing of a nation’s treasury by a sitting president and his friends. One of the worst examples of this is President SeseSeku (Mobutu) of the Congo, who is said to have stolen between $5 – $8 billion US from his countrymen, leaving his citizens impoverished. His lavish spending on frivolous things like the renting of an aircraft to deliver his daughter’s wedding cake (also costing tens of thousands of dollars) to the Congo in time for the reception is but one example. Nigeria’s President Sani Abacha is said to have embezzled on the order of $2-5 billion US from his country’s coffers. Corruption is also fostered from outside a country as, for example, some governments or companies of the North have been caught in the act seeking, for example, to bribe local officials to accept toxic waste on their soil.

Two Women: a Chadian peasant and a Sudanese refugee (UNHCR),
archive.wn.com/2004/03/131400/aidnes 13 March 2004, Bamena, Chad

Conflict
– there have been several conflicts in sub-Saharan Africa in the past few decades. Most recently, there have been armed conflicts within countries (Sierra Leone, Liberia, Rwanda, Ivory Coast, Congo) as well as between them (e.g., Eritrea and Ethiopia). Aside from death, destruction and despair, and the lost economic and political development opportunities such conflicts cause widespread population movement (refugees) across international borders. Today, there is a movement to develop an all-African peacekeeping force to cope with political armed conflicts on the continent.

Southwest AFrica Camel Patrol: Toy soldiers www.jamesfinnminiatures.theshoppe.com

Colonialism
– the colonial period of African history has left a clear mark on Africa’s borders, cultures, bureaucracies, policies and politics, and ethnic conflicts. The industrialized countries continue to leave their marks on the hopes, desires and development prospects of African citizens. Africans deserve a life in which they do not have to struggle day by day for the well-being of their families, friends, villages and countries. They want security so they can raise and provide for their families in peace. It is also clear that not all former colonial powers feel any sense of responsibility for the current situation in sub-Saharan Africa. Most recently, the German government, for example, has only recently refused a request for compensation to the Herero people of Southwest Africa (Namibia) for having tried, almost successfully, to exterminate them in the early 1900s as part of its colonial policy. How has Belgium, for example, assisted its former African colonies in their struggle for economic development? German Southwest Africa Camel Patrol; Toy soldiers www.jamesfinnminiatures.theshoppe.com

Forty years or more have passed since the decolonization era and in time the responsibilities of African leaders will begin to be taken into account for the problems that future Africa leaders will have to face. Colonialism will be blamed for its negative impacts and African political leaders will likely be blamed for theirs.

Cold War
– America and her NATO allies as well as the Soviet Union and her former Soviet bloc countries, China, Cuba as well as the former apartheid regime in South Africa have been in large part responsible for the difficult conditions that sub-Saharan Africans find themselves in today. For example, to see photographs of marauding bands of kids with kalishnikovs is a horrible sight. One could easily argue that the ideological rivalries during the Cold War fostered the heavy arming of the African continent. It was good politics (as well as good business) in the Cold War days (until the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991) for each side to support those who claimed to believe in their particular ideology. It was also good for the supporters who received guns and funds to carry out in Africa the proxy wars of the Cold War superpowers.

Patrice Lumumba, Assassinated Congolese revolutionary leader

The superpowers and other forces of foreign intervention polarized Africa in the name of their ideologies, and when they no longer continued their cold war using proxies to fight for their causes, they walked away from many of Africa’s economic and political problems, leaving armed factions and expressing little guilt about the mess they had left behind. This was not unlike a few decades earlier when colonial rulers abandoned the continent. History might eventually show that the activities of the superpowers on the African continent were as devastating to a viable and peaceful future for African governments and economies as the impacts and legacies of the colonial period.

Climate
– At any given time, Africa has a varied climate. It ranges from wet and tropical rainforests to hyper arid and desert environments. A large part of sub-Saharan Africa is at a high risk to drought from one year to the next and one decade to the next. You can pick any region on the continent — east, west, south, northeast and southwest – and see that the impacts of drought conditions in the past few decades are sure to have influenced food production and food shortage. Everyone who is familiar with Africa is aware that the drought in the West African Sahel ran off and on for almost twenty years starting in the late 1960s. The Horn of Africa suffered from several one-to-two year droughts and severe food shortages in the twenty-year period starting in 1972. Well over a million people perished in the droughts and famines that occurred in this period, partly as a result of climate conditions but partly as a result of lack of a quick and effective response from the political leaders with in and outside the affected countries.

Sadly overlooked, in Africa’s climate situation, a fact is that about the time in the 1960s those African colonies were gaining their independence from their European rulers, the regional climate seem to have changed for the worse. In the Sahel, the 1950s and 1960s had been relatively wet, whereas from 1968 till the 1990s the Sahel was relatively dry. New leaders of recently independent countries had to cope with droughts, severe food shortages and famines. At the same time they were trying to get their new governments organized and up and running. Even the colonial governments would have had difficulty in coping with the impacts of these often severe and prolonged droughts.

Yetanother “C”: Condoms

I have added the word condoms to the list of Cs as a safety reminder. The need for the liberal distribution of condoms everywhere, not just in Africa, can help civilizations curb the HIV/AIDS crisis. This is as true for Africa as it is for all parts of the globe. The US government, however, influenced by conservative religious groups (i.e., the right wing end of the political spectrum) is opposed to providing condoms to developing countries. Religion aside, condom distribution is one approach toward reducing the spread of AIDS. This disease has already been responsible for millions of deaths as well as millions of orphans in Africa.

“Climbing out”

There is an expression that is quite instructive: “When you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.””Climbing out” refers to developing a real strategy or Action Plan with a timetable, as opposed to more nice words about the future that await the continent’s inhabitants. There is an urgent need for African leaders, the international community, former colonial powers and former Cold War superpowers, as well as present-day ones, to give Africa a sustainable future for people and their environments. Piecemeal programs and suggestions are like band-aids being applied to much more serious health problems. No more humanitarian aid rivalries, no more blatant corruption, no more “wait and see” policies toward genocide situations. [Today there is debate about the characteristics of genocide, but that is only because if a situation is deemed to be genocide then governments around the globe have a responsibility to act to stop it].

Where it is applicable, there is a need for all concerned about Africa’s future to put self-serving pride, negative histories, greed, personal agendas and ethnic and ideological rivalries aside at least for a while in order to embark on building a better future for all of Africa’s publics. They should no longer be deprived of the basic necessities required to live a wholesome life on their planet. The world’s leaders, former colonial rulers, former superpowers and especially African leaders owe this to them.