underpaidgenius:

At least some people are looking at the geopolitical implications of long-term drought in the Middle East and north Africa, instead of rah-rah boosterism about democratic impulses and the shiny power of social media.

Francesco Femia and Caitlin Werrell via The Center for Climate & Security

Out of the blue?

International pundits characterized the Syrian uprising as an “out of the blue” case in the Middle East  - one that they didn’t see coming. Many analysts, right up to a few days prior to the first protests, predicted that Syria under al-Assad was “immune to the Arab Spring.” However, the seeds of social unrest were right there under the surface, if one looked closely. And not only were they there, they had been reported on, but largely ignored, in a number of forms.

Water shortages, crop-failure and displacement

From 2006-2011, up to 60% of Syria’s land experienced, in the terms of one expert, “the worst long-term drought and most severe set of crop failures since agricultural civilizations began in the Fertile Crescent many millennia ago.” According to a special case study from last year’s Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction (GAR),of the most vulnerable Syrians dependent on agriculture, particularly in the northeast governorate of Hassakeh (but also in the south), “nearly 75 percent…suffered total crop failure.” Herders in the northeast lost around 85% of their livestock, affecting 1.3 million people.

The human and economic costs are enormous.  In 2009, the UN and IFRC reported that over 800,000 Syrians had lost their entire livelihood as a result of the droughts. By 2011, the aforementioned GAR report estimated that the number of Syrians who were left extremely “food insecure” by the droughts sat at about one million. The number of people driven into extreme poverty is even worse, with a UN report from last year estimating two to three million people affected.

This has led to a massive exodus of farmers, herders and agriculturally-dependent rural families from the countryside to the cities. Last January, it was reported that crop failures (particularly the Halaby pepper) just in the farming villages around the city of Aleppo, had led “200,000 rural villagers to leave for the cities.” In October 2010, the New York Times highlighted a UN estimate that 50,000 families migrated from rural areas just that year, “on top of the hundreds of thousands of people who fled in earlier years.” In context of Syrian cities coping with influxes of Iraqi refugees since the U.S. invasion in 2003, this has placed additional strains and tensions on an already stressed and disenfranchised population.

The biggest implication is that deposing one — or even a dozen — strong man totalitarian governments will not alter the situation on the ground. And projections — cited by the authors in the report above — show continued decline in rainfed crops in Syria “between 29 and 57 percent from 2010 to 2050”.

I agree with the authors and others that stopping the brutal suppression of the opposition movement in Syria is and should be the immediate focus of international efforts. However, the broader implications of Syrian drought — and the drought across the entire region — are not really addressed by the authors.

A region with growing population and rapidly diminishing water can only lead to a few scenarios, none of them good. Water wars and massive waves of ecological migration are not outcomes that the region — or the world as a whole — are willing to face.

(h/t Thomas Friedman)

Shameless plug: I wrote about Egypt’s new government and climate change policies for GOOD last year. I’m quite interested in Middle Eastern climate policies. I think they’ll carry a lot more political weight for the UN climate process once the countries begin to stabilize.

Same as previous post, but shows how Reuters is reporting differs on the same subject:

(Reuters) - The Environmental Protection Agency will miss an end-of-month target for proposing greenhouse gas regulations for power plants, the head of the EPA said on Wednesday.

The administration of President Barack Obama is under pressure from business to cut environmental regulation that critics say is hurting the economy, and last week Obama backtracked on smog plans.

The EPA is  working on plans to limit greenhouse gases from power plants and oil refineries, and it had been targeting releasing some utility-focused proposals on September 30.

“Greenhouse gases for power plants is first on the docket,” EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson said on the sidelines of an event in San Francisco. “Although we are not going to make the date at the end of the month, we are still working and will be shortly announcing a new schedule.”

The EPA also is working on the Mercury Air and Toxics Standards, the first national standards for mercury and acid gases from power plants. “We are still intending to finalize that ruling in November,” she said.

A separate set of  standards for boiler emissions, called Maximum Achievable Control Technology, have been stayed and the agency plans to announce next steps in October, an agency spokeswoman said.

(for more environmental news see our Environment blog at blogs.reuters.com/environment <http://blogs.reuters.com/environment> )

Source: Reuters Environment

Another set of environmental rules has been postponed. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson says the agency won’t make its goal of issuing new rules for power plants by Sept. 30. It’s the second time the new rules have been delayed. It had originally aimed to issue the new regulations on July 26, but facing pressure from congressional Republicans and industry, the agency extended the deadline to the end of this month. Earlier in September, the Obama administration postponed new ozone standards for at least two years.

Source: Daily Beast

The answer will surprise you. (Note I’ve enabled answers, please leave your comments. I’d like to hear from you on this one.) Yale E360 asked 8 renowned climate scientists if the current weather extremes can be traced to anthropogenic climate change. The majority (7-1) gave the qualified answer of “no, but…”.

While they agreed that extremes are occurring, they pointed out that variability is part of the natural processes of climate. There will be mega heat waves, mega snow storms, and mega typhoons irrespective of how much carbon is pumped into the atmosphere. Thus, the fact that climate is already quite unpredictable needs to carry more weight in models that include GHGs.  

Most surprising, at least to me, is that the scientists recognized that human population is skewing the data in ways that make “climate change” a policy emergency. More people are moving to areas that are vulnerable to disasters. We’re moving to the coasts, building bigger homes and infrastructure, and generally concentrating in areas that are vulnerable to disasters.

Scientists in both camps said two physical phenomena — warmer air holds more moisture, and higher temperatures exacerbate naturally occurring heat waves — would almost by definition mean more extremes. But some argued that the growing human toll from hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, and heat waves is primarily related to burgeoning human population and the related degradation of the environment.

 Judith Curry, Chair of the Georgia Institute of Technology’s School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, had what I think is the best answer of the group. Curry responded to the question with a straight forwardness that I appreciate. That climate models are weak, that advocates may be making mistakes by pointing to current events for political gain, and that the IPCC’s data is too oversimplified to make reasonable decisions. 

The substantial interest in attributing extreme weather events to global warming seems rooted in the perceived need for some sort of a disaster to drive public opinion and the political process in the direction of taking action on climate change. However, attempts to attribute individual extreme weather events, or collections of extreme weather events, may be fundamentally ill-posed in the context of the complex climate system, which is characterized by spatiotemporal chaos. There are substantial difficulties and problems associated with attributing changes in the average climate to natural variability versus anthropogenic forcing, which I have argued are oversimplified by the IPCC assessments. Attribution of extreme weather events is further complicated by their dependence on weather regimes and internal multi-decadal oscillations that are simulated poorly by climate models.

I have been completely unconvinced by any of the arguments that I have seen that attributes a single extreme weather event, a cluster of extreme weather events, or statistics of extreme weather events to anthropogenic forcing. 

More field data over longer periods of time are needed in order to make statistically significant correlations between isolated weather events, and anthropogenic change. The answers they give are quite instructive. And I would ask climate advocates to give it a read and consider their opinion about changing policy is soundly informed. What do you think? 

Source: Yale E360

Must read. Bloomberg blows the lid off of a DC front group that’s funded by anti-environmental corporations with major stakes in reversing regulations. The group drafts bills for Republican legislators, who then bring the issue to the floor and public to attack climate change, EPA, enviro-regs, and more.  

Source: Bloomberg

Update: The group is called ALEC. I’m reading about their attack on women’s rights. Click here to see some of bills it has proposed. There is also a petition to get rid of them.

Shakes Magic 8-Ball “Outlook not so good.” In a devastating policy outlook update, Derek Spence of the IISD, offers perspective on the upcoming COP17, which will be held this December in Durban, South Africa.

Recall that recent climate commitments achieved at the COP15 in Copenhagen, and the COP16 in Cancun were discussed just a few weeks ago at the Bonn Climate Conference held in Germany (a summary of the Bonn conference is here).

The COP17 is seen as the end point for the Kyoto Protocol, signed in 1997 by 191 of the world’s 193 countries. Recall the US refused to sign Kyoto.

Spence writes that countries are more than reluctant to re-up on Kyoto. This is interesting, since many countries have agreed to dedicate billions to various emissions reduction and adaptation projects that were finalized at the previous COP15 and COP16. Are world leaders experiencing a sort of moral hazard, or false sense of security as a result? In other words, since these policies are in place, perhaps leaders do not see the need to re-up on Kyoto. (Note: A summary of the commitments are in the article.)

Still, Spence is clear that his pessimism lies in the suspicion that developed countries are not serious about their emissions reductions commitments: 

Prospects for agreement in Durban: Poor.

Can Durban Seal a Comprehensive New Deal?

Even an ambitious second commitment period under Kyoto will not deliver the type of emissions reductions needed to keep the lid on climate change. Some industrialized countries have been vocal in calling for a comprehensive global agreement that includes all major emitters. Only an ambitious treaty covering all key players could possibly limit global temperature rise to 2°C or less.

The concern on the part of developing countries is that such a treaty could blur the lines between the obligations of developed and developing countries. Under Kyoto, developed countries undertook to take the lead in combating climate change. This is a condition the South wants honored, and explains why they continue to press hard for a second commitment period.

Source: IISD Policy Update, “What Can a Deal in Durban Deliver?”

“The International Policy Network, one of the U.K.’s most prominent climate-change-denying think tanks, has shut its doors, apparently after an internal battle during which science finally overwhelmed both ideology and the lure of dirty oil funding.

IPN is one of 150 right-wingy think tanks and similar organizations that can trace their heritage to Sir Anthony Fisher, the ideologue and disciple of the neoliberal economist Frederich Hayek. According to documents that The Independent obtained through a Freedom of Information request, the IPN Board was effectively composed of Fisher’s two children, Linda Whetstone and Michael Fisher. It was they who decided to burst the delusional organization’s bubble last year.

The Independent speculates that Whetstone may have been influenced by her daughter, Rachel, now vice president for global communications and public affairs for Google. Rachel Whetstone’s husband, Steve Hilton (inset with British Prime Minister David Cameron) was the strategist who moved the British Conservative Party into the realm of reality on climate policy.

Regrettably, the U.S. IPN survives.”

Source: Richard Littlemore