COMMENT - An
image of green patches in the Sahara.
Sahara Desert Greening Due to Climate Change?James Owen for National Geographic News
July 31, 2009
Desertification, drought, and despair—that's what global warming has in store for much of Africa. Or so we hear. Emerging evidence is painting a very different scenario, one in which rising temperatures could benefit millions of Africans in the driest parts of the continent.
Exodus From Drying Sahara Gave Rise to Pharaohs, Study Says
Scientists are now seeing signals that the Sahara desert and surrounding regions are greening due to increasing rainfall.
If sustained, these rains could revitalize drought-ravaged regions, reclaiming them for farming communities.
This desert-shrinking trend is supported by climate models, which predict a return to conditions that turned the Sahara into a lush savanna some 12,000 years ago.
Green Shoots
The green shoots of recovery are showing up on satellite images of regions including the Sahel, a semi-desert zone bordering the Sahara to the south that stretches some 2,400 miles (3,860 kilometers).
Images taken between 1982 and 2002 revealed extensive regreening throughout the Sahel, according to a new study in the journal Biogeosciences.
The study suggests huge increases in vegetation in areas including central Chad and western Sudan.
The transition may be occurring because hotter air has more capacity to hold moisture, which in turn creates more rain, said Martin Claussen of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg, Germany, who was not involved in the new study.
"The water-holding capacity of the air is the main driving force," Claussen said.
Not a Single Scorpion
While satellite images can't distinguish temporary plants like grasses that come and go with the rains, ground surveys suggest recent vegetation change is firmly rooted.
Exodus From Drying Sahara Gave Rise to Pharaohs, Study Says
In the eastern Sahara area of southwestern Egypt and northern Sudan, new trees—such as acacias—are flourishing, according to Stefan Kröpelin, a climate scientist at the University of Cologne's Africa Research Unit in Germany.
"Shrubs are coming up and growing into big shrubs. This is completely different from having a bit more tiny grass," said Kröpelin, who has studied the region for two decades.
In 2008 Kröpelin—not involved in the new satellite research—visited Western Sahara, a disputed territory controlled by Morocco.
"The nomads there told me there was never as much rainfall as in the past few years," Kröpelin said. "They have never seen so much grazing land."
"Before, there was not a single scorpion, not a single blade of grass," he said.
"Now you have people grazing their camels in areas which may not have been used for hundreds or even thousands of years. You see birds, ostriches, gazelles coming back, even sorts of amphibians coming back," he said.
"The trend has continued for more than 20 years. It is indisputable."
Uncertain Future
An explosion in plant growth has been predicted by some climate models.
For instance, in 2005 a team led by Reindert Haarsma of the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute in De Bilt, the Netherlands, forecast significantly more future rainfall in the Sahel.
The study in Geophysical Research Letters predicted that rainfall in the July to September wet season would rise by up to two millimeters a day by 2080.
Satellite data shows "that indeed during the last decade, the Sahel is becoming more green," Haarsma said.
Even so, climate scientists don't agree on how future climate change will affect the Sahel: Some studies simulate a decrease in rainfall.
"This issue is still rather uncertain," Haarsma said.
Max Planck's Claussen said North Africa is the area of greatest disagreement among climate change modelers.
Forecasting how global warming will affect the region is complicated by its vast size and the unpredictable influence of high-altitude winds that disperse monsoon rains, Claussen added.
"Half the models follow a wetter trend, and half a drier trend."
Labels: ENVIRONMENT, GLOBAL WARMING, SAHARA
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Another great problem of the current world
Written by Fidel Castro Ruz
THE financial crisis is not the only problem; there is another, worse one, because it is not related to the means of production and distribution, but existence itself. I am referring to climate change. Both are present and are to be discussed simultaneously.
On Sunday April 5, UN talks on climate change are to be resumed in Bonn. Approximately 190 countries are attempting to reach an agreement on the reduction of greenhouse gases, to come into effect from 2012, when the Kyoto Protocol expires.
The United States never ratified that protocol. The new president, who inherited the problem from Bush, announced on Saturday the setting up of a forum "on energy and the climate," which is to bring together 17 important world economies, including Brazil, Mexico, China and the Union European, in Washington on April 27-28.
The Bonn meeting runs over 11 days and the U.S. delegation will be headed by Todd Stern, who is expected to read out a communiqué.
Ivo de Boer, the UN executive secretary on climate change, expressed his hope that Stern will set central guidelines for the United States.
There are strong contradictions on the contribution that economies should make.
The meeting will discuss the limits for various countries of the world on emissions of carbon dioxide, a gas that is threatening to liquidate living conditions on the planet.
There are heavy discrepancies between the industrialised countries and emerging ones like China, India and Brazil; these are stating that they first want to see whether the rich countries commit themselves to reducing CO2 emissions.
Meanwhile, vast volumes of water accumulated in the glaciers of the Antarctic region are visibly melting as a consequence of emissions of the harmful gas to date, which will continue being emitted for innumerable years. "The scientists are exaggerating!" the skeptics protest and, with such feeble hopes, keep on dreaming.
News on the world financial crisis continues to arrive via the agencies, including Xinhua and TASS. From them, it can be inferred that, in the opinion of the Asian Development Bank, the Chinese economy will only grow by 7 per cent in 2009. That would seem to be an irony taking into account that, according to World Bank analyses, the economy of developed countries making up the OECD will see a contraction of 3 per cent; that of the Euro zone, 2.7 per cent; that of the United States, 2.4 per cent; and world trade, a contraction of 6.1 per cent.
In an article published by the Washington Post, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev is proposing that Russia and the United States should work together on drawing up measures to combat the financial crisis and examine the need to create a world reserve currency.
Chinese President Hu Jintao has asked for strengthened coordination among different nations on economic policies and to make joint efforts to avoid trade and investment protectionism. "The international financial system must undertake the necessary reforms in an integrated, balanced, gradual and efficacious manner, in order to avoid a world crisis in the future," he added.
George Soros, the famous US magnate of Hungarian origin, stated: "China will be coming out of the recession faster than the rest of the world." He noted that "China has a system which is more suited to these emergency conditions."
Similar praiseworthy opinions can be seen in yesterday’s news:
"Defying economic slumps at home and abroad, China's stock market ended the first quarter of this year with a gain of 30 per cent, making it the world's best-performing major market by far," reports Reuters in a summary of analysts’ opinions.
While China, for its part, is stating that a new international reserve currency needs to be created, Robert Zoellick has stated: "The dollar will remain the world's dominant reserve currency… A dollar-based system and a strong dollar will be critical to pull us out of this hole…It would take more than a Group of 20 summit to establish a new reserve currency…"
The World Bank maintains that the global economy is facing a dangerous year and could sink further into recession. It has conceded that China will continue to grow, but at a slower rate.
According to the Bank, the most developed countries are in a worse situation, given that they will suffer an evident contraction. It is probable, it affirms, that the need for external financing on the part of developing countries will increase to $1.3 trillion in 2009. With reduced capital flows, this will generate a breach that will fluctuate from $270-700 billion.
For that reason, in its opinion, none of them will escape the consequences of the global economic crisis, above all the poorest, in which years of progress will be ripped to shreds. The developing world is running the risk of paying a heavy price for the crisis that originated in the countries of the North.
Pascal Lamy, director of the World Trade Organisation, is urging the G-20 to resist protectionism and avoid "low intensity" actions designed to protect its industries from possible collapse.
For its part, the OECD, mentioned above in relation to contracting GDP’s, notes in the unemployment context that this will rise steeply and exceed 10 per cent; "It will almost double" in relation to its 2007 level in the G-7 countries: the United States, Japan, Germany, Britain, France, Italy and Canada.
Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the Eurogroup, called on European members taking part in the G-20 Summit to show courage and demand the inclusion of various US states and territories on the blacklist of harmful tax havens. "Mr. Brown should ask Mr. Obama to put an end to the tax havens on his territory," he stated in a meeting of the European Parliament’s Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs.
The future regulation of the international financial system has become a point of friction between London and Washington on one side, and Paris on the other.
There is an abundance pf news and information that illustrates this friction.
For his part, José Manuel Durão Barroso, president of the European Commission, speaking more diplomatically, expressed his confidence that consensus would be achieved, denying that the positions of the European Union and the United States would be exclusive. He affirms that "we must put ethics back into the system," by demanding measures against tax havens.
OXFAM, the well-known nongovernmental organization, has stated that with the $8.42 trillion of public money committed by the rich governments of the world to rescue the banking sector, world poverty could be eliminated over the next 50 years. It is also arguing on behalf of the hundreds of millions of poor in the world who will sink even deeper into poverty, and on behalf of women, who are the hardest hit by the crisis.
Via their international organizations, the trade unions are calling on the G-20 to pay due attention to unemployment, always produced by the crises, and demanding that the Summit Statement must include references to decent jobs and labor rights.
Tomorrow sees the start of the Classic between the largest economies of the world, the most developed, and those that are to be developed. The rules of the game are not very clear. We shall see what is discussed and how it is discussed. Will a final statement already be drafted and approved beforehand? Perhaps, perhaps not. In any event, it will be very interesting to find out, in the midst of so much diplomacy, what positions everyone will adopt. In one way or another, secrets will be impossible. Everything has changed. (Taken from CubaDebate)
Labels: FIDEL CASTRO, GLOBAL WARMING
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