The U.S. National Climatic Data Centre reports that 2012 was the warmest year on record for the United States as well as the 15th driest year on record. An estimated 61 per cent of the U.S. experienced drought conditions. Though not as intense as the droughts of the 1930s that devastated the U.S. Great Plains and the Canadian Prairies, the 2012 drought hit farmers hard in the U.S. Midwest and drought-like conditions affected farmers in Ontario as well.
While natural weather conditions are a factor, the phenomenon of climate change appears to be an increasingly important factor in weather volatility—with dry regions becoming drier and wet regions wetter.
For Britain, 2012 was its wettest year on record, and senior climate scientists are convinced that climate change was a big factor. In fact, four of Britain’s five wettest years on record have occurred since 2000. There are other signs of climate change as well, from shrinking ice cover in the Arctic, to weather conditions in India, China, and elsewhere.
While the Harper government remains aloof from the climate change issue as it strives to make Canada “an energy superpower” there are signs that the world’s failure to agree on climate change actions may be about to change, largely because the evidence of climate change is growing and the consequences of continuing inaction are significant, especially for world food supplies and prices.
HSBC, the big international banking group, earlier this month predicted “the year ahead will be dominated by growing tension between the ever-stronger evidence of climate change and the inadequate policy response.” It warned that “global greenhouse gas emissions will continue to rise, putting the world on track for long-term warming approaching four degrees Celsius, far above the two degree target.”
World leaders have agreed that an average temperature rise above two degrees would have calamitous consequences. So serious negations could begin this year for a global climate agreement in 2015, the agreed date for an agreement set by climate negotiators.
Perhaps the biggest impacts of climate change will be on water supplies and food. Climate change is likely to bring more drought conditions to regions already prone to drought, including the Canadian Prairies. Western Canada is dependent on water flows from the South Saskatchewan River, but the river system depends in large part on annual glacier and snow pack melts from the Rocky Mountains. With lower glacial melt in future years as a warmer climate shrinks glaciers, the South Saskatchewan River flows will deliver less water, threatening water availability.
At the same time, higher temperatures mean increased evaporation of water in key reservoirs such as Lake Diefenbaker, the Great Lakes, and other open sources of fresh water.
The U.S. Southwest is also vulnerable as higher temperatures increase arid conditions, the water potential of the Colorado River Basin shrinks and the massive Ogallala aquifer, which stretches from South Dakota to Texas, is being rapidly depleted. Water shortages for agriculture as a consequence of climate change will also affect India, China, Africa, Latin America and parts of Europe and their ability to feed their people.
It will be the impact of climate change on water and the significance of this on the world’s food supplies that, more than anything else, will drive home the reality that we have to take climate change seriously. Storms and fires dramatize the issue in a TV/Facebook world, but clean water and food will drive the need for action.
The world population is continuing to grow—by another 1.3 billion people by 2035. Add to this, the rapid growth in the middle class in the emerging market economies, with a massive shift in diets from grains to much-more water-intensive dairy and meats in diets, and world food pressures will be enormous.
Water is essential for our survival, as is food. As climate change poses a greater and more obvious risk to the availability of clean water supplies and to food for a growing population, it will become even more difficult to keep on putting off serious action to address climate change in a significant way.
It won’t be cheap or easy, but it will be necessary. This will mean that even our own government will have to take the issue more seriously.
Original Article
Source: hill times
Author: DAVID CRANE
No comments:
Post a Comment