"James Annan" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
> The UNDP's new "Human Development Report" is out, and on the BBC:
>
> http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/low/sci/tech/6126242.stm
This quote bugs me:
"Because industrialised nations have focused their climate change
initiatives on reducing the amount of greenhouse gases being pumped into the
atmosphere, support for adaptation in developing countries has been
"piecemeal and fragmented", the report says."
It buys in to Lomborg's fallacy that we are faced with an either-or choice.
It is not "because" of climate change mitigation that adaption is
under-addressed, it is simply that adaption needs more attention.
> you can see the reproduced graphic which paints a picture of reduced
> crop yields in Africa, along with the title "Projected impact of climate
> change on cereal productivity in Africa." Substantial areas show large
> drops of 25% or more "by 2080".
>
> Going back to the UNDP report, this map is found to be based on a paper
> in which some researchers took climates from a range of models under all
> the main SRES marker scenarios, which give quite a range of results when
> fed into their crop model.
>
> I guess I don't need to tell you which set of model results (both from
> least to most alarming model, and least to most alarming scenario) are
> used for the graphic which the UNDP selected, and from which they quote
> results.
>
> The authors of the paper even clearly emphasise (at least twice) that
> the A2 scenario is now considered very much an outlier in terms of what
> is actually plausible. There wasn't room to mention that minor detail in
> the 424 pages of the UNDP report, of course.
I agree, that is not a very forthcoming way to do such a report.
> So far, so standard. But on top of that, the authors of the paper also
> point out that none of these potential yield losses in any region
> actually approach the amount by which the current yield actually
> undershoots the potential. That presumably means that take-up of normal
> farming practice would mean increased yields even in the worst affected
> areas and under the hypothesis of extremely high emissions and the worst
> set of model results. There's not even a need to appeal to
> out-of-thin-air technological miracles here, although technological
> advances would hardly be unexpected over this time scale. Surely the
> appropriate response here is for these societies to develop and
> modernise, which will bring rapid and substantial benefits across a
> broad swathe of problems, rather than "climate-proof" themselves against
> something that might in extremis have a modest effect many decades hence
> if they haven't moved on in the meantime.
I don't think this is a fair criticism, it is simply noting that part of the
solution should be quite straightforward. This report surely can not make
assessments based on all kinds of possible realities exist today, it must
assume that all else is equal and then apply a climate change to the
situation.
I didn't read it, but it would be the right thing to point out in the report
what you are pointing out here, that many options for ameliorating the
hardships that may be coming are all within the realm of current
possibilities.
> Incidentally, according to the paper, the reduction in yield and
> accompanying increase in hunger should be roughly linear with time/CO2
> concentration, which suggests that it should perhaps be visible by now
> if it is a real effect (I don't know about interannual variability or
> quality of data collection though). Anyone know if there are data
> supporting this?
I would think that the Green Revolution would hide any such effect over the
half century at least.
Coby
--~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
Global Change ("globalchange") newsgroup. Global Change is a public, moderated
venue for discussion of science, technology, economics and policy dimensions of
global environmental change.
Posts will be admitted to the list if and only if any moderator finds the
submission to be constructive and/or interesting, on topic, and not
gratuitously rude.
To post to this group, send email to [email protected]
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
For more options, visit this group at
http://groups.google.com/group/globalchange
-~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
