I don't oppose all wars. And I know that in this crowd today, there is no shortage of patriots, or of patriotism. What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war.
Why do I have the feeling that ignoring this is a huge practical and moral mistake?
United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon met Sunday with Pakistan's president, and both men urged the international community to step up efforts to help the millions affected by flooding in Pakistan...
He said he has visited scenes of natural disasters worldwide, but has seen "nothing like this. The scale of the disaster is so large -- so many people and in so many places, in so much need."
"Thousands of towns and villages have simply been washed away," Ban said. "Roads, buildings, bridges, crops -- millions of livelihoods have been lost. People are marooned on tiny islands with the floodwaters all around them. They are drinking dirty water. They are living in the mud and ruins of their lives. Many have lost family and friends. Many more are afraid their children and loved ones will not survive in these conditions."
When you read about the effects of climate change, you see these moving maps where large parts of the land mass become submerged and you think, "boy that's really something." But what this shows is the depth of human misery that mass flooding causes. And the probability that this will be happening with frequency and sometimes simultaneously going forward is quite high. What that translates into, aside from the aforementioned human misery, is political instability, mass migration and social upheaval. This is a peek at our future, and it's happening in one of the most dangerous places on earth.
Gosh, ya think?
At the same time, General Patreas is putting on a grand show to convince all the serious people (who laugh at global warming 'cause it snowed last winter) that we really can and should "win the war" in Afghanistan where less than 100 al Qaeda operatives may still be.
And "winning" that war will... do what exactly? Because I do have a much, much clearer sense of what it would mean to win the war on global warming. Another war in which we're very, very clearly fighting on the wrong side.
Of coure, global warming doesn't "cause" these sorts of things directly. It "merely" loads the dice more and more heavily in the direction of a different climate regime, and what we're experiencing now are the transitional effects as what were once highly unusual conditions become increasingly frequent.
The Great Russian Heat Wave of 2010 is one of the most intense, widespread, and long-lasting heat waves in world history. Only the European heat wave of 2003, which killed 35,000 - 50,000 people, and the incredible North American heat wave of July 1936, which set all-time extreme highest temperature records in fifteen U.S. states, can compare. All of these heat waves were caused by a highly unusual kink in the jet stream that remained locked in place for over a month. The jet stream is an upper-level river of air, between the altitudes of about 30,000 - 40,000 feet (10,000 - 12,000 meters). In July over Europe and Asia, the jet stream has two branches: a strong southern "subtropical" jet that blows across southern Europe, and a weaker "polar" jet that blows across northern Europe.
The polar jet stream carries along the extratropical cyclones (lows) that bring the midlatitudes most of their precipitation. The polar jet stream also acts as the boundary between cold, Arctic air, and warm tropical air. If the polar jet stream shifts to the north of its usual location, areas just to its south will be much hotter and drier than normal. In July 2010, a remarkably strong polar jet stream developed over northern Europe. This jet curved far to the north of Moscow, then plunged southwards towards Pakistan. This allowed hot air to surge northwards over most of European Russia, and prevented rain-bearing low pressure systems from traveling over the region. These rain-bearing low pressure systems passed far to the north of European Russia, then dove unusually far to the south, into northern Pakistan. The heavy rains from these lows combined with Pakistan's usual summer monsoon rains to trigger Pakistan's most devastating floods in history.
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