Generals From Multiple Nations: Climate Will Drive "Unimiginable" Refugee Crises - Guardian

[hatrack]

Climate change is set to cause a refugee crisis of “unimaginable scale”, according to senior military figures, who warn that global warming is the greatest security threat of the 21st century and that mass migration will become the “new normal”.

The generals said the impacts of climate change were already factors in the conflicts driving a current crisis of migration into Europe, having been linked to the Arab Spring, the war in Syria and the Boko Haram terrorist insurgency. Military leaders have long warned that global warming could multiply and accelerate security threats around the world by provoking conflicts and migration. They are now warning that immediate action is required.

EDIT

Brig Gen Stephen Cheney, a member of the US Department of State’s foreign affairs policy board and CEO of the American Security Project, said: “Climate change could lead to a humanitarian crisis of epic proportions. We’re already seeing migration of large numbers of people around the world because of food scarcity, water insecurity and extreme weather, and this is set to become the new normal. “Climate change impacts are also acting as an accelerant of instability in parts of the world on Europe’s doorstep, including the Middle East and Africa,” Cheney said. “There are direct links to climate change in the Arab Spring, the war in Syria, and the Boko Haram terrorist insurgency in sub-Saharan Africa.”

After Donald Trump, who has called climate change a hoax, won the US presidential election in November, Cheney said he expected senior military officials to impress upon Trump the grave threat posed to national security by global warming. “I’ve got to believe there are enough folks on the national security side that we can make a dent in this.”

EDIT

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/dec/01/climate-change-trigger-unimaginable-refugee-crisis-senior-military

[Auggie]

1. My belief is nearly all public climate change deniers secretly accept climate change

They deny the science in public because their fossil fuel donors tell them to.

It also fits perfectly into their Disaster Capitalist plans -- wait for a panic and then use that panic to push through their pro-corporate policies. And you know? It will happen. They will get what they want.

[DetlefK]

2. Example: Persian Gulf

The region around the Persian Gulf will become so hot by 2100, it will be almost uninhabitable for humans.
Almost. Uninhabitable. For. Humans.

The affected areas are:
- southern Iran (but they can mitigate that, because Iran stretches far to the north, to cool mountain-regions)
- Kuwait
- southern and possibly central Iraq
- all the small Gulf-States
- Eastern and central Saudi-Arabia will be hit hardest.

Additional to an increasing average temperature, scientists have predicted there will be 1 hot summer-day every few years where it gets so hot that every single human caught outside straight-up dies from heatstroke.



The syrian civil-war was kicked off because agriculture was declining and the syrian people panicked that there would be a famine.

Now imagine what an actual collapse of agriculture will mean to Iraq and Saudi-Arabia.
Imagine what a collapse of tourism will mean to the Gulf States.
And combine that with a world where oil is no longer an important ressource.

[Blue Shoes]

4. People will still live there.

It will only require more energy to cool their homes and provide them with water. Which means they'll probably burn more fossil fuels to accomplish this. That entire region is going to explode when they run out.

[DetlefK]

5. How many people? What will life there cost? And who can afford to live there?

[TreasonousBastard]

3. One of a bazillion sites and charts showing coastal flooding...

https://www.epa.gov/climate-indicators/climate-change-indicators-coastal-flooding



We might have the resources to build Dutch-type seawalls around Boston, New York, Miami, etc, but then there's Biloxi and New Orleans. And Galveston and the Keys.

Even worse is South and Southeast Asia, with enormous poor populations already hard hit with typhoons and flooding. And no where to go.

For now, it is a lot easier to deny than to plan. Trump is a fool, but the people around him with brains know it won't all fall down on his watch, so denial is the order of the day.

Let the next guy worry about it.

[mackdaddy]

6. I think a severe reduction of food will be the main trigger of collapse.

As the global warming continues, I think the main problem will be the see saw of weather extremes. Very hot weather swinging to extreme cold. Desiccating droughts interrupted by drenching flooding. Not much of the "moderate" weather we have become use to.

Here is Ohio we have had a record warm Autumn, and this week we will be getting a direct Arctic vortex blast and then extreme cold. The Jet stream seem to be in another one of those extreme north south snake patterns. This caused the California and west coast droughts with flooding and extreme snow events in the north east.

Droughts are causing the Smokey Mountains to go up in smoke. Many south American countries are completely out of water for major cities, and the Amazon forests are drying up and burning up.

In 2015 we had an extremely wet late spring/ early summer in western Ohio that cut grain harvests nearly in half. Areas of China and Mongolia are in a dust-bowl conditions. Even small rises of ocean levels are cutting rice production throughout Asia.

As someone else noted, much of the "Arab spring" uprising was due to doubling of food prices due to middle eastern droughts, and Russian crop failures in their bread basket areas. The "migrant" crisis from the middle east and north Africa has much to do with crop failures.

The Romans knew that "bread and circus" could keep the rabble satisfied. Widespread crop failure could bring down civilization of 7 billion in just a few months. Even here, look how fast supermarkets are picked clean during a weather event. I hope we are in another 1998 peak year, but so far the global average temps are just going up at an accelerating rate. We may have only 5 to 10 years before we see this, not the 5 to 10 decades they keep blathering on about.

It is going to be a hell of a ride.