Adaptation must be the name of the game

Top South African weather expert, Dr. Peter Johnston, ascribes the present heatwave conditions over much of the country to global warming while ironically, a colleague of his in Europe attributes the same with the almost unprecedented freezing conditions that have gripped that continent and its cities. Both are right and it illustrates how urgent it has become for global leaders to start concentrating on the need to develop policies and strategies to adapt to the inevitability of climate change.

Dr. Johnston, researcher at the University of Cape Town (UCT) and member of the Climate Systems Analysis Group (CSAG) at UCT said that the second heatwave in three weeks to hit the Western Cape is an indication that, in general, temperatures are on the rise in line with projections for the future. The CSAG predicts that average summer temperatures by 2050 will have risen by 2°C in coastal regions and 3°C inland of South Africa.

These changes already impact exporters of fresh produce such as deciduous fruit, especially in terms of their production schedules and the additional cost of cooling fruits  as quickly as possible after harvesting. Farmers have already had to adapt to deal with these changes to prevent spoilage of their harvest.

In Europe there has also been a need to adapt in cities that are experiencing one of the severest winters in 90 years. On a lighter side, the most famous icon in Brussel, the bronze statute Manneken-Pis, which is of a little boy urinating, has had to stop peeing last week because of the sub-zero temperatures.

Officials turned off the water through the statue that has stood on a Brussels corner since the 1600s, out of concern that the cold might damage its internal mechanism as

temperatures fell to minus 10°C last week – far below the average minimum for February in the Belgian capital.

The Brookings Institution, a non-profit public policy organisation based in Washington, DC, after assessing the potential of all methods of countering global warming emissions, comes to the conclusion that “[t]hese limits to mitigation deliver a clear message: It's past time to begin adapting to climate change with the same effort and specificity that communities invest in preparing for a coming hurricane or flood. Many involved in climate policy see this, but many other policymakers do not” the article says.

It also lists a number steps that need to be take:

• We need to be ready for melting ice, rising sea level, floods, droughts, weather extremes, and changing, stressed ecology;
• We need zoning and other policies to stop people from moving into low-lying coastal cities and areas that will be more prone to flooding and drought;
• We need to breed and genetically engineer crops that will handle extremes;
• We need to anticipate where water shortages will arise and build needed infrastructure or change how the land is used;
• We need to protect and manage ecosystems with a view to how they will change and move, preserving corridors for migration and dispersion;
• We need to establish and maintain a global bank for the DNA and viable tissue of all known species and new species as a safety net against extinction; and
• Most of all, we need to gear up our political will to action now.

Who knows, if we accept the realities of adaptation, maybe the picture will be so vivid, ugly and expensive that we'll address mitigation too.

Adapting the oil and gas industry

Almost a year ago, the environmental consultant and ex-journalist Michael Cote reported on the GOOD-website that the oil and gas industry “…in one of the most ironic flip-flops in environmental history ... is beginning to adapt to climate change.”

He reports that the Industry co-operated with consultants who analysed the oil and gas industry's ability to absorb impacts from a changing climate. A number of recommendations came out of the research co-ordinated by IBM, among others, that the industry should  incorporate climate-change science into its operations.

The website Climate-adaptation claims that “over the last decade, adaptation to climate change has risen to the top of the agenda for researchers, practitioners and decision–makers concerned with environmental change and development worldwide.

In addition to the recognition that adaptation research and policy action had been given less priority than mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions until the beginning of the decade, the enhanced prominence of adaptation is also a reflection of the broadening awareness of its role as a necessary part of the response to climate change that needs to be supported through explicit policy, not just left to happen on its own.”

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Comments (2)

• |2012-02-14 12:29:55 Hajo  - Climate Change
  There is no climate "rule", and climate changes have been there for the past billion of years or longer. It is sickening how the climate prophets stick out their heads as soon as there is any discussion, and they generate the bullshittiest ideas. Climate change has become the biggest cheat and the most rewarding business idea of all times. Otherwise we would have the dinosaurs between us as pets or source of raw meat (unless the Chinese would have imagined there was something against their impotence, then the African poachers would be behind and extincting them without climate change).
  
  The heartiest laugh I got a few months ago in Zambia. There is a Carbon Tax on vehicles, while the entire country is blue of smoke of all the man-made bush fires. For the politicians this bullshit has become a source of major income.
  
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• |2012-02-21 16:59:33 Jim Elsworth  - Duck - Climate Change
  Presumably Hajo is a climate scientist - otherwise how does (s)he come to be so knowlegeable? If so (s)he is among the 2% of Climate scientists who do manage to present selective data to "demonstrate" that CC is not man made. The oil barons put their heads in the sand because they think it is in their commercial interest to do so. They put their own continued massing of ridiculous wealth above the chance of their grandchildren to have grandchildren. They put more of it into publicity to convince people who do not appear to have done school science to carry on with their profligate use of fossil energy.
  
  I am not a climate scientist but I think it prudent to believe the 98% and the evidence we have now, like melting polar caps, is convincing to me. The positive feedback mechanisms make sense to me and I believe them when they say the sun is hotter now than it has ever been before.
  
  If Hajo is much younger than me then (s)he might see the day when the evidence is so overwhelm...
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