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50 million climate change refugees by 2010

carlitos

"más divertido"
carlitos
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I haven't really participated in the global warming topics here, as I don't know much about it. A forum search for this phrase turned up empty. Anyway, I thought that this seemed a little alarmist at the time, and it apparently hasn't come to fruition. Can someone enlighten me? Have islands disappeared yet? Was this an official United Nations stance?

http://maps.grida.no/go/graphic/fifty-million-climate-refugees-by-2010

Fifty million climate refugees by 2010. Today we find a world of asymmetric development, unsustainable natural resource use, and continued rural and urban poverty. There is general agreement about the current global environmental and development crisis. It is also known that the consequences of these global changes have the most devastating impacts on the poorest, who historically have had limited entitlements and opportunities for growth.
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It's not that global warming isn't happening, or that it won't produce undesirable effects. It's that somewhere when that news story was first published, someone chose the worst possible scenario because, as they say in the drive-by media, "if it bleeds, it leads".

It's good that AGW hasn't produced an apocalypse yet. That doesn't mean it isn't there, media hysteria (or that of PACs and NGOs) notwithstanding.
 
Alarmist predictions are regular. None come to fruition. Yet they unashamedly keep trolling them out to scare little children and the weak of mind.
 
A.A. Alfie said:
Alarmist predictions are regular. None come to fruition. Yet they unashamedly keep trolling them out to scare little children and the weak of mind.
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So the 10 million refugees from the floods in Pakistan dont count? Or the 15 million plus in China facing starvation conditions due to famine dont count?
 
Why have the floods and food shortages occured? And how many refugees are there?

btw. We were told just a few years ago that it would not rain in Australia sufficiently to ever fill our dams again. Guess what?
 
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I'm not sure what your link is supposed to mean or allude to?

We have had heaps of rain lately; the dams are full or filling across the eastern states. So much for doomsday predictions of eternal droughts.
 
Sword_Of_Truth said:
It's not that global warming isn't happening, or that it won't produce undesirable effects. It's that somewhere when that news story was first published, someone chose the worst possible scenario because, as they say in the drive-by media, "if it bleeds, it leads".
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I don't think this even qualifies as media or headlines. It looks like it's just UN internal policy stuff. Am I wrong?

http://maps.grida.no/go/collection/...ltural-science-and-technology-for-development

ETA - That's why I posted it here, and not science / technology. I'm interested in the political aspects of such a policy. Are the residents of Tuvalu getting exit visas to New Zealand or someplace? That sort of thing.


ETA2 - If MG1962 has sources for claims on China, Pakistan and Australia, I'd appreciate it and read them.
 
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carlitos said:
I don't think this even qualifies as media or headlines. It looks like it's just UN internal policy stuff. Am I wrong?
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the thinking of the media and various PACs and NGOs is similar for similar reasons. One doesn't rack up high ratings, or votes, donations and funding by telling people only a few minor bad things could happen. You always go with your worst case scenario.
 
I compare it to Y2K. There's no question that there was a Y2K problem, however some of the more dire predictions (planes falling out of the sky, for example) were a little out there.
 
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A.A. Alfie said:
Alarmist predictions are regular. None come to fruition. Yet they unashamedly keep trolling them out to scare little children and the weak of mind.
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and alarmist claims of alarmist predictions are regular too..

when you say "btw. We were told just a few years ago that it would not rain in Australia sufficiently to ever fill our dams again. Guess what?"

who said this?

Current Drought/flood cycles in australia are not related to global warming, they are related to el Nino effects...we are going to have more floods, and droughts, and floods....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Niño-Southern_Oscillation

Wacko predictions are a problem alfie but so are people who try to make some case that something is demonstrated when they don't happen other than wacko predictors are wacko.
 
So we should listen to whacko predictons or not? I'm a bit confused.

My understanding of the point of the OP was that there are these extreme predictions and they never seem to come true. What would be good would be a list of predictions (no matter how short ;)) of accurate predictions around AGW.
 
A.A. Alfie said:
My understanding of the point of the OP was that there are these extreme predictions and they never seem to come true.
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Let me clarify. This was predicted by the relevant UN agency. The OP asks whether the UN is making policy based on the assumption that this prediction has / will come true. Look at the map - is the UN relocating islanders? Moving people out of sub-saharan Africa? Etc. I would never have posted that "these extreme predictions never come true."

Oh, great. A few conservative blogs picked this up, and now the graphic is down the memory hole. My original link is now dead, and a search comes up empty.

http://maps.grida.no/index.cfm?event=searchFree&q=fifty+million+climate+refugees+by+2010
 
You need to be very careful of these predictions, because they are based on many, many different extrapolations (including the fact that people's behavior and technology change far faster than these effects). We currently deal with large displacements of people over short term problems (much more difficult than long term gradual shifts) such as the flooding and food problems mentioned.

An example of this is the 1894 article in the London Times that argued that cities would be unlivable by 1950 because there would be so much horse crap in the streets (as in many feet deep). In general, long term extrapolatory predictions are almost always wrong, because people's actions and social structures and technologies are very flexible.
 
jayh said:
You need to be very careful of these predictions, because they are based on many, many different extrapolations (including the fact that people's behavior and technology change far faster than these effects). We currently deal with large displacements of people over short term problems (much more difficult than long term gradual shifts) such as the flooding and food problems mentioned.

An example of this is the 1894 article in the London Times that argued that cities would be unlivable by 1950 because there would be so much horse crap in the streets (as in many feet deep). In general, long term extrapolatory predictions are almost always wrong, because people's actions and social structures and technologies are very flexible.
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Thanks. Do you have a cite for the London Times thing? This post is the #1 google result.

Ah - found this. http://www.thefreemanonline.org/columns/our-economic-past-the-great-horse-manure-crisis-of-1894/
 
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Here's the 2005 paper this is based on -

Environmental Refugees: an emergent security issue

Note that it states that the last assessment, in 1995, already calculated an estimated 25 million climate refugees -

As far back as 1995 (latest date for a comprehensive assessment), these
environmental refugees totalled at least 25 million people, compared with 27 million
traditional refugees (people fleeing political oppression, religious persecution and
ethnic troubles). The environmental refugees total could well double between 1995
and 2010

It was not a "global warming" paper other than to state that it will get worse when it's effect become apparent.

Reading the paper, I'd say the OP is wrong. The prediction has almost certainly come true.
 
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