Africa on the brink of catastrophic change -- blame global warming

[Karmadillo]

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/270809_africa21.html

Africa is facing the greatest catastrophe in human history. Climate change represents a nightmare scenario for the future of the people of the world's poorest continent, according to the official preparing a top-level report due to land on the desks of British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Chancellor to the Treasury Gordon Brown later this year.

Emerging analysis seen by the Stern Review into the economic impact of climate change suggests one of the worst affected places on the planet also will be the poorest.

Global warming could cause temperature rises double those elsewhere. The consequences would be dramatic declines in rainfall and a fall in crop yields that could make previous famines look like small tragedies. Desertification could accelerate around the Sahara. There are likely to be severe water shortages in many parts of the continent.

Diseases such as malaria, dengue fever and cholera may increase. As many as 67 million more people could be at risk of malaria epidemics by the 2080s. As a result, huge sections of the population may be set on the move.

more...

[Karmadillo]

1. Kick

nt

[ronnie624]

2. How strange that such an important issue

attracts so little attention. Perhaps for many the implications are just too frightening to contemplate.

Two things give his conclusions added urgency, he said: The scientific evidence on global warming is strengthening daily, and there are risks over and above those that are usually considered. For example, the release of methane from the permafrost could bring an acceleration that is not factored into many existing models on climate change.

Carl Sagan wrote of the possibility of a "cascade effect" in which a certain level of instability is reached resulting in the accelerated collapse of existing weather patterns.

Who knows what horrors lie in store for human civilization?

[Karmadillo]

4. I find the lack of attention truly baffling. We're putting our own

children (not to mention billions of children we'll never meet) at risk to maintain a consumer "paradise" we could easily do without. Insane.

[Ezlivin]

3. "We dumped massive amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere and all we got

was a couple of dead continents."

That's the new tee-shirt message.

I fear that the powers-that-be are perfectly happy to see Africa completely depopulated through the ravages of AIDS and weather-induced crop failures.