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Is climate change real?
Findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) suggest that human
activity will drive global temperatures up by between 1.4C and 5.8C by the end of the
century. The IPCC is a scientific intergovernmental body set up by the World
Meteorological Organization (WMO) and by the United Nations Environment
Programme (UNEP). Its constituency is made of scientists, governments and individuals;
in 2007, the IPCC was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for its sterling work in steering
governments to the path of climate change abatement measures. The findings of the first
IPCC Assessment Report of 1990 played a decisive role in leading to the United Nations
Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which was opened for signature
in the Rio de Janeiro Summit in 1992 and entered into force in 1994.
In addition to the IPCC’s missives, an overwhelming body of scientific evidence
incriminating the burning of fossil fuels as the prime cause of climate change has stacked
up, so as to prod the leaderships of the national academies of sciences of the United
States, United Kingdom, France, Italy, Germany, Japan, Russia, China, and India, among
others, to publicly state that global climate change is real, caused mainly by humans, and
reason for early, concerted action. The climate change hype may be pretty recent, but its
prediction isn’t. The Swede Svante Arrhenius in 1895 was literally a Casandra, since he
correctly predicted that carbon dioxide released by coal burning could cause global
warming. Needless to say, many of his contemporaries dismissed his calculations.
Despite this, consensus on the matter is still elusive, with climate change sceptics in a
state of denial. One of the cardinal explanations for climate change bandied around by
such sceptics is that the phenomenon is all due to changes in sunspot activity (intensity of
radiation emitted by the sun). Other sceptics point their finger at the so-called
Milankovitch cycles, which refer to long-term periodic changes to the Earth’s orbit
around the sun and in the angle at which rotation axis is tilted, since there is a good
correlation between these events and glaciation (Ice Age) events.
If one were to place momentarily the two diverging perspectives to the climate change
issue on an even par, the precautionary principle should hold sway. Such a principle
literally boils down to a modicum of common sense since it states that there is a
responsibility to intervene and protect the public from exposure to harm where scientific
investigation discovers a plausible risk in the course of having screened for other
suspected causes.
In the summer of 2005, the Russian solar physicists Galina Mashnich and Vladimir
Bashkirtsev, two prominent climate change skeptics, literally put their money where their
mouth is and bet $10,000 with British climate expert, James Annan, that the world would
cool over the next decade, due to an expected downturn in sunspot activity.
Besides the deniers, one also finds those who seek to water down the relevance of climate
change and downplay its priority, stating, in a rather naive and superficial way that the
world has other more pressing priorities to contend with, namely the fight against global
poverty. The attempt at decoupling climate change from socio-economic issues is
symptomatic of a lack of understanding of the real implications of climate change. A
recent (February 23rd 2009) press release by WWF International hits the nail on its head
when stating that the mitigation of climate change impacts is key to protecting human
rights, within the ambit of a congress convened under the patronage of noted Human
Rights barrister Cherie Blair and Archbishop Desmond Tutu. The intrinsic relation
between climate change and human rights is encapsulated in the following phrase coined
at the congress
“Those who are most impoverished, most marginalised and whose rights are least
respected are also those who depend most on their environment for subsistence.”
Possible impacts for Malta
Since 1950, the mean sea level has risen by 3.5mm every year, and a rise of 25 to 58cm is
projected by 2050. Under such a scenario, infrastructure in small island states could bear
the brunt of combined inundation, flooding and physical damage associated with coastal
land loss. A study by economic doyens Lino Briguglio and Gordin Cordina in 2003 has
suggested that the putative economic impacts of climate change on Malta could be
significant, affecting sectors such as tourism, fisheries and public utilities.
The Mediterranean Basin has already run the gauntlet of anomalous summer heat waves
– the notorious 2003 one claimed a staggering toll of 70,000 who died as a result of heat
stress, mainly elderly people in France and Italy. Scientists estimate the mortality risk to
increase between 0.2 and 5.5 per cent for every 1°C increase in temperature above a
location-specific threshold. Frame this within the projected rises in temperature and the
mathematics are pretty much sobering. In fact, Europe has warmed more than the global
average. Projections suggest further temperature increases in Europe of between one and
5.5 °C by the end of the century, which is also higher than the projected global warming
(1.8 - 4 °C). Needless to say, under such sweltering conditions, the prospects for summer
tourism don’t look too good.
Other unsavoury possible impacts of climate change on Mediterranean countries include
amplified soil water evaporation rates, especially in summer, which would compound
water shortages for agriculture and this trigger lower crop yields and also intensify what’s
essentially already a cut-throat competition for water in the basin. This could in turn
further stoke the flames of groundwater consumption, resulting in an enhanced rate of
aquifer salinisation in a time-honoured vicious circle. Impacts on marine systems include
the proliferation of alien (exotic) species and the possible mass mortality of vulnerable
species such as gorgonians.