Climate change 'will make hundreds of millions homeless'

[limpyhobbler]

Carbon dioxide levels indicate rise in temperatures that could lead agriculture to fail on entire continents

It is increasingly likely that hundreds of millions of people will be displaced from their homelands in the near future as a result of global warming. That is the stark warning of economist and climate change expert Lord Stern following the news last week that concentrations of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere had reached a level of 400 parts per million (ppm).

Massive movements of people are likely to occur over the rest of the century because global temperatures are likely to rise to by up to 5C because carbon dioxide levels have risen unabated for 50 years, said Stern, who is head of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change.

"When temperatures rise to that level, we will have disrupted weather patterns and spreading deserts," he said. "Hundreds of millions of people will be forced to leave their homelands because their crops and animals will have died. The trouble will come when they try to migrate into new lands, however. That will bring them into armed conflict with people already living there. Nor will it be an occasional occurrence. It could become a permanent feature of life on Earth."

The news that atmospheric carbon dioxide levels have reached 400ppm has been seized on by experts because that level brings the world close to the point where it becomes inevitable that it will experience a catastrophic rise in temperatures. Scientists have warned for decades of the danger of allowing industrial outputs of carbon dioxide to rise unchecked.
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more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/may/12/climate-change-expert-stern-displacement

[Mojorabbit]

1. I hope I will be long gone by then

I worry for my nieces and nephews

[Bannakaffalatta]

2. There are precautions you can take -

- but no sure safe places. I would strongly recommend to the young that they learn some post-electronig-age skills and move to an area that has a probable future - i.e. won't be under water, without water, or next to disputed or poisoned water.

[NickB79]

3. I'm sticking to my home state of Minnesota

I think we'll do alright up here.

[Bannakaffalatta]

4. Probably

If you don't allow too much fracking and nobody discovers oil-sand under your farms.
But can you prepare for a large influx of displaced people from the south? They'll be refugees, bereft of property, unaccustomed to the climate, many of them lacking rudimentary survival skills, disoriented and upset. Armed with assault rifles and bibles.