Quick. Call Bekins. Because a whole lot of people need to move in the next 16 months.
Koko Warner, a senior U.N. researcher at the loftily-named UN University Institute for Environment & Human Society, claims 25-50 million people will be become refugees as climate change unleashes more natural disasters and slashes farm output.
The Thaindian reports Koko’s dire predictions from the heart of the subcontinent:
“Climate change will displace 25-50 million people by next year. The situation will be the worst in the poorer countries.”
The Thaindian continued:
“Most people will seek shelter in their own countries while others (will) cross borders in search of better odds.
“Societies affected by climate change may find themselves locked into a downward spiral of ecological degradation, towards the bottom of which social safety nets collapse while tensions and violence rise.”
Warner said in the densely populated Ganga, Mekong and Nile river deltas, a sea level rise of one metre could affect 23.5 million people and reduce the land currently under intensive agriculture by at least 1.5 million hectares.
A sea level rise of two metres would impact an additional 10.8 million people and render at least 969,000 more hectares of agricultural land unproductive.
“Many people won’t be able to flee far enough to adequately avoid the negative impacts of climate change,” the researcher warned, “unless they receive support.”
Good god, Koko, don’t look now but the sky is falling.
Only one problem: Koko’s prediction is wildly out of line with even the UN’s overhyped IPCC report, which envisions a sea level increase of just 8-inches to two feet in the next century. Yet Koko’s talking about an increase of six-and-half feet in the next sixteen months.
We think we know what the problem is here. Scientists are supposed to be named things like Sigmund and Isaac and Nikola and Marie.
Please bear witness, ladies and gentlemen, as to what happens when you listen to reports from a scientist named Koko.
Source: Thaindian.com
This post was last modified on January 26, 2021
View Comments (10)
Ha Ha...OOPS....
So many weasel-words in there.
"...our report is on the conservative side in terms of EXPLORING what kinds of impacts environmental change COULD have on migration and displacement..."
Lots of things COULD happen if your baseless computer-modelled fantasies come to pass. Thing is, they won't. You're getting paid big bucks to write science-fiction and pass it off as much-needed warning.
Can you imagine what would happen to this world if pianos started falling on the world's major cities? That's right. Pianos. Grands. Wurlitzers. Players. Consoles. Studios. All at once, if millions upon millions of various kinds of pianos started falling on the cities of the world, why, I bet millions would die. And don't get me started on the inevitable mass displacement. All but the most die-hard survivor-types would leave the piano-stricken cities in droves, heading for the relative safety of the boondocks.
You could do (and get $$Grant Money$$, which is what it's all about, isn't it, Koko?) a study on that piano scenario. Hire a bunch of programmers to make a computer model, write a panic piece, the end of which must say "...and we need more grant money to study this matter further, DESPARATELY! (And so I can pay off this year's vacation cruises around the world and my inevitable idiocy-stickered Volvo.)"
Koko, the only mass-displacement that is likely this century on the scale that you speak of will be that formulated by and carried out by Communist governments which force their way on an unwilling population.
Just like Communist governments always do with their human livestock.
HAS YOUR ORGANIZATION FIGURED OUT YET THAT MASS-DISPLACEMENT OF PEOPLE HAS HISTORICALLY BEEN THE PURVIEW OF COMMUNISM?
Or is it all science-fiction based on IPCC, NOAA, and NASA lies? Is it all junk science for your Volvo and ski-vacation payments?
Hi, everyone. This is Koko Warner who wrote the report this article talks about. Its an interesting experience to get this kind of feedback...if anyone wants to read our report which thaindian.com talks about, you can find it at the following link: http://www.ehs.unu.edu/image:923?menu=20. Welcome feedback, of course...but I did want to reply that our report is on the conservative side in terms of exploring what kinds of impacts environmental change could have on migration and displacement. We worked with institutions like Columbia University, CARE International, the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, the International Organization for Migration, and many other research and humanitarian organizations on this report. There is a lot more written on the topic if anyone is interested in learning more.
Werner indeed deserves criticism, if she has been quoted accurately, for communicating the 25-50 million estimate in a sensational and possibly misleading way. She certainly should not have said this "will" happen, as it is only a rough estimate.
However, you have wrongly conflated the "25-50 million by 2010" estimate with the "sea level rise of one metre could affect 23.5 million people in certain river deltas" claim. They are unrelated.
In the actual report (http://www.ehs.unu.edu/file.php?id=621) the refugee estimate is cited to Myers, 1995. (http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/357/1420/609.full.pdf) Myers discusses "environmental refugees" broadly defined as "people who can no longer gain a secure livelihood in their homelands because of drought, soil erosion, desertification, deforestation and other environmental problems, together with the associated problems of population pressures and profound poverty." This definition necessarily means that "A large, though undocumented, proportion" of people already counted as refugees or internally displaced persons fall under the "environmental refugee" classification.
In the quote, Warner could be read as claiming that 25-50 million people will be displaced between now and 2010 by climate change. This would indeed be unreasonable and alarmist. Instead of "Climate change will displace 25-50 million people by next year," she should have said something like "According to our best estimates, the number of environmental refugees - including those displaced by climate change - will have reached 25-50 million by next year."
It is likely that none of this will matter to you or your blog's readership, as you evidently see the scientific consensus on climate change exclusively through the funhouse mirror of your own bizarre and parochial politics. Cheers.
oh my god climete changes means that people in poorer countries will ned to travel more? My GOD! Dont they do that for like - for milion years already :O?
Isn't Koko a chimpanzee in the San Fransisco Zoo?
I was wondering the same thing
It could be Owen Wilson, he does have a crooked nose. Why doe AGW only affect movie stars?
is that owen wilson ???? thats all i can say about this pc....
Meanwhile, the sun is spotless ( http://spaceweather.com/ ) meaning solar activity is minimal, perhaps meaning that we are moving into a global cooling cycle, meaning perhaps, that KoKo is Kookoo!