Bali Climate Initiative and Key Climate Resources
December 13, 2007 at 08:55PM [DRAFT - to be revised] The BBC World News Service is covering the Bali Conference as well as having assembled an impressive collection of resources for understanding the climate crisis, response opportunities, and tracking the response and prospects.
The overwhelming impression from reading the language of climate change is the degree to which effects are communicated with words, phrases, and concepts that do not effectively transmit real meaning, implications, and threat climate change poses to people and the human economy and society. Not only is the full import not communicated, but the language creates a distance, a separateness of human society from the effects as if the effects, like species extinction of 20-30 percent by 2020 will somehow affect only nature, the environment, not human society. This disconnect creates and eeriness to the reading.
For instance, the report by the International Panel on Climate Change says, "Some regions are likely to experience water shortages. Coupled with increasing demand, this is likely to result in large increases in the number of people at risk of water scarcity. It is likely to affect livelihoods. . . ." How long can humans last without water? How much water can be transported great distances as a continuous water supply? How long could industry and agriculture production continue with greatly reduced or eliminated water? When a few commonly known facts are added to these pronouncements of climate effects, the translation amounts to millions, if not tens of millions or hundreds of millions of people will die in short spans of time.
Further, the report is virtually silent on the economic implications of the list of weather and ecological effects the report chronicles. For instance, dramatic reductions or disruptions in a local area's or region's water supply will do more than "likely affect livelihoods." It will not only kill people, but it will destroy industries and economies, and relatively quickly. The increasingly extreme weather events of climate change will not only quickly decapitalize existing human investments but will fatally compromise the capacity to recover, to recapitalize from such events. Extreme weather events will quickly bankrupt the insurance industry and economies at whatever scale they occur. Further, it will quickly create a new and expanding list of uninsurable events because of the certainty and unaffordability of insuring - recovering from -- extreme weather events. This will accelerate the decapitalization of human economy.
The following links provide access to a wealth of resources on climate change from the IPCC reports and world media services, even if the full import is not presented.
- Climate change by world region and economic sector: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/629/629/6528979.stm
Climate change -- A Summary of The Evidence: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/guides/457000/457037/html/default.stm
Climate Change -- A Special Report: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/portal/climate_change/default.stm
Understanding Climate Change (forecast, greenhouse effect, etc.): http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/sci_nat/04/climate_change/html/greenhouse.stm
UN Challenges States on Global Warming (plus right-hand column link to many links): http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7098902.stm
BBC Climate Portal: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/portal/climate_change/default.stm
Hadley Center Climate Projections: http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/hadleycentre/models/modeldata.html
Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change (IPCC): http://www.ipcc.ch/
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