[dohboi]

http://www.theguardian.com/global-devel ... n-disaster

Aid agencies have warned that tens of millions of people in Africa, the Caribbean and Asia face severe hunger in the next six months following failed harvests, stunted crops and soaring prices of staple foods.

Droughts and floods have occurred across the world as a result of the strongest recorded El Niño weather event.

The natural climate phenomenon is peaking now and leading to a humanitarian disaster, say agencies including Oxfam, ActionAid, Care International, Plan and Catholic Relief Services.

“The effects of the strongest El Niño in several decades are set to put the world’s humanitarian system under an unprecedented level of strain in 2016 as it already struggles to cope with the fallout from conflicts in Syria, South Sudan, Yemen and elsewhere,” said Oxfam in a briefing paper.

According to the UN refugee agency, the number of people forced to flee their homes because of conflict has reached nearly 60 million, a level unknown since the second world war.

But in addition, nearly 39 million people will need food aid because of shortages.

“Millions of people in places like Ethiopia, Haiti and Papua New Guinea are already feeling the effects of drought and crop failure.

It’s already too late for some regions to avoid a major emergency,” said Jane Cocking, Oxfam GB’s humanitarian director."

[Outcast_Searcher]

So, I think the US should offer some of the food for the not poor and not starving folks who have decent jobs in the US who are on the SNAP program to help such people, if things actually get as bad in places like Africa due to crop failures as predicted.

This would actually be a good humanitarian reason to shrink the program in a country in on ongoing economic growth cycle, instead of continuing to "feed" it for all it's worth in an attempt to buy more democratic votes -- demonstrating sanity by the left in an election year.

Not that I would ever expect this to happen with the current POTUS, of course.

[onlooker]

Well we have entered most assuredly the era of consequences. I for one am not going to say I told you so. It is way to grim to make coy remarks like that. I hope and pray that somehow humanity can avoid the more pernicious outcomes that appear to be on the horizon. This El Nino and what appears to be happening in the Arctic right now due to El Nino portend a climate disaster as methane increasingly escapes over there.

[Lore]

What they don't say is the planet is not going to bounce back after this epic El Niño to some semblance of late last century climate.

Last year was the warmest year in recorded records without an El Niño. This year will of course beat that by a mile and so will 2016. It looks though like we're certainly on the next leg up in warming with the resulting response of adding more energy into the system.

The year 2015 is likely to be a milestone where weather from here on out takes the gloves off and pounds humanity senseless.

[Lore]

Another AGW thread. Well here in California the snow pack is %140 of normal. Can't we give this a rest and maybe just create a single AGW thread?

I have come to believe that these horrible climate events would have been reduced if the planet weren't over run with humans and ecosystems more able to absorb shock. For instance know we have awful flooding all the time around here. But the flood plains are not built up, the hillsides are not denuded and the people are not desperate to live in shacks in the wrong places. But that is the way it is now. And all the whining and hysteria will not make it go away.

The drought is far from being over from one El Niño year and come late summer it'll be back to business as usual. This shold worry you? If not, then welcome to denial.

The whining on the other hand may make a few people wake up.

[Lore]

Lore you know with certainty that the drought will be back? First I have heard the drought is 'business as usual.' Some (including myself) once considered the crazy hurricane season of 2005 to be the new normal. Yet that short-term trend never returned, now 10 years on.

I would contend, as many scientists as well do, that the greater West has been through an abnormally short moist period and is now reverting back to its long term arid nature. Overlay that with climate change and you can see what I mean. Mega droughts of 50 years and more were not that unusual for the region in the past.

Hurricanes are a weather phenomenon, much different then climate.

As per the message saturation: what makes you believe this tiny little echo chamber represents the audience that makes a difference? I, you, we, have all done our best. We know it. You know it. We heard it. You might want to bring it to Fox. Better yet, bring it to the Chinese. This is a peak oil web site, and that conversation has priority.

Two sides of the same coin. The whole battle now revolves around burning the last of our fossil fuels while jeopardizing life on our planet.

[KaiserJeep]

The past events look like this:

....and we are approaching the temperatures seen in '97-'98, and with an additional approximately 1.7 billion humans in those vulnerable 3rd world countries.


It is the additional 3rd World humans that will increase the casualties, not the entirely normal temperature variations.

[Lore]

Exactly KJ it's the long term temperature increase that's a concern. Not, short term El Niño, La Niña events.

[GHung]

The following La Nina is projected to be just as severe as this El Nino (the yin and yang of weather crappola).

About 15 years back, a particularly brutal La Nina caused severe drought the American southwest, widespread flooding in China that displaced 20 million people, and landslides in Venezuela that killed upwards of 50,000.

A new study concludes that extreme La Nina events like this will become twice as likely in the future due to climate change.

The study in Nature Climate Change found that the La Nina extreme weather -- which happens about once every 23 years -- will occur every 13 years by the end of this century, based on an analysis of 21 climate models. Three-quarters of those increased La Nina events would follow extreme El Nino events "thus projecting more frequent swings between opposite extremes from one year to the next.".......

....."We will see more big events like the El Nino in 1997-98 followed by La Nina in 1998, 1999 and 2000," he said. "Those extremes swings will occur more frequently in a warmer world. If you look at the global impact of the El Nino in 1997-98 and the following La Nina, there were really extremes. There were huge losses of life and there were billions of dollars of property losses......"

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/climate-cha ... -la-ninas/

We had a very wet year here, finishing with 78.15 inches (198.5cm). I take very precise measurements for CoCoRAHS and CWOP. Our average is 65", though the last few years have been above that.

Hold on to your butts. It's going to be a wild ride.

[Newfie]

For sake of argument, let's assume that the initial premise is correct, continued drought and starvation. What is the right thing to do?

What was the right thing to do after Sandy? Beach replenishment? Payout insurance claims and rebuild houses on the beach front?

What was the right thing after Katrina? Rebuild NOLA? better and bigger dikes to shore up the touris area even though the land is subsiding?

What is the right thing to do in the drought areas? Feed the folks so that, maybe in a year or two or never, they can resume an agragarian lifestyle?

Do we just suck it up and move the 10's of millions into Northern Europe? Not Southern Europe because that's gonna go down to drought in the foreseeable future?

The logic is the same for rebuilding after any obviously recurrent disaster. If you can't "fix" the problem, stop the hurricane, stop the drought, then what are y really accomplishing by rebuilding? Is it just pissing away precious resources only to delay, prolong and increase human suffering?

[dohboi]

Thanks, Newf, for hitting on something like the real issue--what do we do from here?

What do we do now that we know this is not just some random extreme event, but a prelude to ever worstening events of similar and greater magnitude?

What do we do when we may be the next to have our lives utterly decimated or annihilated by the next extreme or beyond-extreme event?

What do we do when we know it is all utterly unraveling before our eyes?

Perhaps Newf was asking these as rhetorical questions, I don't know.

But I really want to know...

What do we do?

[GHung]

What do we do? There is no we. There's you and your tribe. Build your lifeboats and live in them.

Happy new year..........

[onlooker]

Well its the New Year. What do we do? We pray if you believe in God and we each do what our heart tells us to do. Karma and such. Happy New Year all.

[KaiserJeep]

What we do is nothing, beyond personal acts that are performed by individuals as acts of kindness for other individuals.

We don't, to start with, force 10,000 disgruntled and displaced Syrian refugees, virtually all of whom simply want to return to live in Syria, to come to the USA and live amongst people that they have been taught for their entire lives are their mortal enemies. I mean, what could possibly go wrong with that?

We don't want to rebuild New Orleans, or the Atlantic seacoast for that matter, using Federal funds. Nor do we want to force those people to buy insurance. They are free to live wherever they want, and as always to guess wrong and lose everything. Just as all of the residents of California are today being forced to choose to live here without Earthquake insurance. I had it for 8+ years, then the government intruded after the Loma Prieta earthquake in '89, and now almost nobody has it. So we liquidate those insurance companies who unwisely wrote policies that covered property destroyed by the storms, after they deplete the insurance superfund. With so many people believing that rising sea levels are going to destroy those beautiful coastal homes anyway, people can make informed choices about new super-expensive insurance, or moving to higher ground.

Likewise with the Mississippi river basin flooding for the umpteenth recorded time, we don't want to rebuild those towns along the rivers.

Nor do we want to replace homes destroyed in Tornado Alley.

We should instead, only disburse funds for those who want to build safe underground housing in tornado zones, houses on stilts in flood areas, etc.

My personal preference is that the government play zero role in disasters, aside from basic search and rescue. If so many insist upon a Nanny government, the least we should do is only encourage responsible post-disaster behavior.

Basic common sense.

[vtsnowedin]

Exactly KJ it's the long term temperature increase that's a concern. Not, short term El Niño, La Niña events.

I'll go you one further then that. With seven billion and rising population I think we will have tens to a hundred million displaced and starving every year in the future regardless of the weather or climate change. El Nino events may bunch deaths up in seasonal ebbs and flows but overall we have reached a practical limit and the excess will die from shortages and related hardships.

[Pops]

At one point I thought this would be a site about what to do.

Turns out to be a bunch of old guys wringing their hands.

[Newfie]

Well its the New Year. What do we do? We pray if you believe in God and we each do what our heart tells us to do. Karma and such. Happy New Year all.

That reminds me of the answers I get when I ask my condo dwelling friends "What will you do when the power and water go out?" "I will die."

I think that is true for some, but some will also scrape and fight to survive.

I the meantime "I will die." is just a PC way of saying...."it scares me, I don't want to think about it."

[Newfie]

At one point I thought this would be a site about what to do.

Turns out to be a bunch of old guys wringing their hands.

I don't get your statement at all Pops. I see a lot of concrete ideas here. Sometimes deciding to do nothing is the hardest action to take, it is still doing something. There is no neutral position.

I think I'm with Gung-ho, we realized that humanity will do nothing rational and decide to take personal responsibility for our selves and kin. How is that not doing something?

How is thinking and contemplating and listening not doing something?

What am I missing in your comment?