Memorial Day, 2030

[bananas]

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/05/28/491144/memorial-day-2030-2/

Memorial Day, 2030

By Joe Romm on May 28, 2012 at 10:13 am



<snip>

But all of the impacts occurring simultaneously will have an even more devastating synergy (see “An Illustrated Guide to the Science of Global Warming Impacts“). It means the rich countries will be far less likely to be offering much assistance to the poorer ones, since there will be ever worsening catastrophes everywhere simultaneously so we’ll be suffering at the same time. Heck, this deep economic downturn and the record-smashing disasters of the past two years has already exacerbated media myopia and compassion fatigue to help those around the world staggered by floods and droughts.

And that suggests another deadly climate impact — far more difficult to project quantitatively because there is no paleoclimate analog — may well affect far more people both directly and indirectly: war, conflict, competition for arable and/or habitable land.

<snip>

So when does this start to happen?

Thomas Fingar, “the U.S. intelligence community’s top analyst,” sees it happening by the mid-2020s:

By 2025, droughts, food shortages and scarcity of fresh water will plague large swaths of the globe, from northern China to the Horn of Africa.

For poorer countries, climate change “could be the straw that breaks the camel’s back,” Fingar said, while the United States will face “Dust Bowl” conditions in the parched Southwest“¦.

He said U.S. intelligence agencies accepted the consensual scientific view of global warming, including the conclusion that it is too late to avert significant disruption over the next two decades. The conclusions are in line with an intelligence assessment produced this summer that characterized global warming as a serious security threat for the coming decades.

Floods and droughts will trigger mass migrations and political upheaval in many parts of the developing world.

<snip>

For one discussion of the kind of wars we might be seeing, albeit for the year 2046, here is a three-part radio series on Climate Wars by Gwynne Dyer, a Canadian journalist and historian of warfare.

<snip>

Much much more - definitely worth at least scanning through the full article.

The three-part Gwynne Dyer radio series is at http://gwynnedyer.com/radio/

[GreenPartyVoter]

1. Do you suppose the line of thinking from the-powers-that-be is to just let it happen? Thin the herd

and take some of the pressure off the planet and humanity's need for resources?

[bananas]

2. I hope not. nt

[GreenPartyVoter]

3. Somehow, I can't put it past them.