Subject: [SciPol 189] LA Times story on epidemiological effects of global warming

From: Lloyd Davidson <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2007 07:33:02 -0800

March 12, 2007

Top Scientists Warn of Water Shortages and Disease Linked to Global Warming
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON, March 11 (AP) - The harmful effects of global warming on 
daily life are already showing up, and within a couple of decades 
hundreds of millions of people will not have enough water, top 
scientists are likely to say next month at a meeting in Belgium.

At the same time, tens of millions of others will be flooded out of 
their homes each year as the earth reels from rising temperatures and 
sea levels, according to portions of a draft of an international 
scientific report by the authoritative Intergovernmental Panel on 
Climate Change.

Tropical diseases like malaria will spread, the draft says. By 2050, 
polar bears will mostly be found in zoos, their habitats gone. Pests 
like fire ants will thrive.

For a time, food will be plentiful because of the longer growing 
season in northern regions. But by 2080, hundreds of millions of 
people could face starvation, according to the report, which is still 
being revised.

The draft document, the second of a series of four being issued this 
year, focuses on global warming's effects. Written and reviewed by 
more than 1,000 scientists from dozens of countries, it still must be 
edited by government officials.

But some scientists said the overall message is not likely to change 
when it is issued in early April in Brussels, where European Union 
leaders agreed Friday to work to cut greenhouse gas emissions 
substantially by 2020. Their plan will be presented to President Bush 
and other world leaders at a summit meeting in June.

The draft report offers some hope if nations slow and then reduce 
their greenhouse gas emissions, but it says what has been happening 
has not been encouraging.

"Changes in climate are now affecting physical and biological systems 
on every continent," the report says, in marked contrast to a 2001 
report by the same international group that said the effects of 
global warming were coming. But that report mentioned only scattered 
regional effects.

"Things are happening and happening faster than we expected," said 
Patricia Romero Lankao of the National Center for Atmospheric 
Research in Boulder, Colo., one of the many co-authors of the new 
report.

The draft document says scientists are highly confident that many 
current problems - change in species' habits and habitats, more 
acidified oceans, loss of wetlands, bleaching of coral reefs and 
increases in allergy-inducing pollen - can be attributed to global 
warming.

For example, the report says North America "has already experienced 
substantial ecosystem, social and cultural disruption from recent 
climate extremes," like hurricanes and wildfires.

But Ms. Romero Lankao said that global warming soon would "affect 
everyone's life," and added that "it's the poor sectors that will be 
most affected."

Another co-author, Terry Root of Stanford University, said, "We truly 
are standing at the edge of mass extinction" of species.

The United Nations-organized network of 2,000 scientists was 
established in 1988 to give regular assessments of the earth's 
environment.

The draft report says that hundreds of millions of Africans and tens 
of millions of Latin Americans who now have water will be short of it 
in less than 20 years. By 2050, more than a billion people in Asia 
could face water shortages. By 2080, water shortages could threaten 
1.1 billion to 3.2 billion people, depending on the level of 
greenhouse gases that cars and industry spew into the air.

It says that death rates for the world's poor from conditions 
worsened by the changes global warming brings, like malnutrition and 
diarrhea, will rise by 2030. By 2080, 200 million to 600 million 
people could be hungry because of global warming's effects, it says.

It also says that Europe's small glaciers will disappear, with many 
of the continent's large glaciers shrinking sharply by 2050. And half 
of Europe's plant species could be vulnerable, endangered or extinct 
by 2100.
The hardest-hit continents are likely to be Africa and Asia, with 
major harm also coming to small islands and some aspects of 
ecosystems near the poles. North America, Europe and Australia are 
predicted to suffer the fewest of the harmful effects.

"In most parts of the world and most segments of populations, 
lifestyles are likely to change as a result of climate change," the 
draft report said. "Net valuations of benefits vs. costs will vary, 
but they are more likely to be negative if climate change is 
substantial and rapid, rather than if it is moderate and gradual."

Many, though not all, of those effects can be prevented, the report 
says, if within a generation the world slows down its emissions of 
carbon dioxide and if the level of greenhouse gases sticking around 
in the atmosphere stabilizes. If that is the case, the report says, 
"most major impacts on human welfare would be avoided; but some major 
impacts on ecosystems are likely to occur."

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