Pakistan: Millions affected by extreme rains and flooding

Wednesday 21 September 2011

"The new study by scientists at the Universities of California and Potsdam has found that half of the glaciers in the Karakoram range, in the northwestern Himlaya, are in fact advancing and that global warming is not the deciding factor in whether a glacier survives or melts.
Dr Bodo Bookhagen, Dirk Scherler and Manfred Strecker studied 286 glaciers between the Hindu Kush on the Afghan-Pakistan border to Bhutan, taking in six areas."

Some glaciers are melting, some aren't. It's looking like global warming is capable of cherrypicking. A heatwave in Russia last year, and yet global warming picks on Texas this year. Maybe CO2 has some level of intelligence? Where will it attack next? Luckily this coming winter, Europe is looking like it will be spared global warming, and will instead be plunged into a colder than usual winter (again). More people are killed by the cold, and yet the extremists want so-called global warming to be reversed. Just how cold do these people want things to get? Why do they want people to be cold?

http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/the-monitors-view/2011/0919/Pakistan-floods-...
snip
But Pakistan shouldn’t be forgotten about for more than just humanitarian reasons. It continues to play a key strategic role in efforts to combat terrorists in neighboring Afghanistan. It still possesses nuclear weapons. And it still has a tense relationship with its neighbor India, another nuclear power.

The latest natural disaster in Pakistan, where 800,000 families still remain homeless from last year’s flooding, threatens again to destabilize what is an already unpopular government there. Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani wisely canceled a trip to the United Nations in New York to instead tour the devastated region, but only after the inappropriate timing of his trip was pointed out in a Pakistani newspaper.

Pakistan has appealed to its community living in the United States to provide aid for countrymen back home. “The magnitude of disaster is much beyond the capacity of Pakistan,” Mr. Gilani conceded Sunday. “I appeal to all people, chambers of commerce, the business community, and the international community to come forward.”

The UN has asked for $357 million in international aid to help victims of the floods, which have been triggered by much heavier than normal monsoon rains. In the affected region, nearly three-fourths of the crops have been destroyed, which will exacerbate recovery efforts.

Whether outsized monsoon season floods are part of a “new normal” for Pakistan remains to be seen. Military planners in the US and elsewhere are already trying to get a handle on how changing climates may affect various countries and, as a result, place a burden on other governments and their militaries to respond.

Monsoons aren’t the only threat. Vast high mountain glaciers that feed Pakistan’s rivers are receding at an unprecedented pace – faster than in any other part of the world, Pakistan’s representative told a recent UN gathering on climate issues. In the long term, this may threaten Pakistan’s water supply as glaciers lose their water-storage capacity and shrink.

Already the unprecedented melt contributes to flooding downstream, including the phenomenon of glacial lake outbursts, in which melting ice causes water in a lake contained by a glacier to be suddenly released, creating floods downstream.

This summer Pakistan has set up five monitoring stations at high elevations, a first step in understanding the rate of melt and how it affects rates of runoff.

Immediate attention must focus on providing international aid for those Pakistanis now in dire need. Longer term, the US and other countries must find ways to promote a more stable government in Pakistan that is better able to help its own people. At the same time, scientific research must be stepped up to help better understand the possible effects of climate change on Pakistan – and the best ways to blunt them.

To state that these weather events, not just Pakistan, but also other weather events, are caused by CO2, one must first prove that any similar event in the past was different to those of modern times.
Not one person has proved conclusively that there is any link between the CO2 levels currently being seen and any weather event. While it is known that CO2 does affect temperature, it is well known that CO2 follows temperature increases. What we are seeing in the climate system now is entirely natural. Stopping all fossil fuel use now will have zero effect on global temperatures or weather.
Sadly, some people still hold onto the worn-out theory that CO2 broke our climate. It did not. But some people on the far left still use that theory to prop-up their political and idealistic agenda because it's all they've got. Once they admit that burning fossil fuels didn't cause the climate to change, they will have to find something/one else to focus their inane guilt and anger onto.
While some people remain open-minded and are ready to accept new scientific theory, based on observed reality, some still adhere to the climate models and failed extremists' rantings.

Almost daily new research comes to the same conclusion, that CO2 is not responsible for climate changes, and that the models were hopelessly wrong.

"Citing "unprecedented public concern" with respect to the impacts of climate change, Li et al. (2011) set out to examine the variability and trends of storminess for the region of the Perth metropolitan coast of Australia. To do so, they conducted an extensive set of analyses using observations of wave, wind, air pressure, and water level over the period 1994-2008. The results of their analysis, in their view, should serve "to validate or invalidate the climate change hypothesis" that rising CO2 concentrations are increasing the frequency and severity of storms...all storm indices showed significant interannual variability over the period of record, but "no evidence of increasing (decreasing) trends in extreme storm power was identified to validate the wave climate change hypotheses for the Perth region." [Fangjun Li, Lucya Roncevich, Charlie Bicknell, Reena Lowry, and Karl Ilich 2011: Journal of Coastal Research]

Another one bites the dust.
One day these green-funded alarmists will find some other way of scaring the people they pretend to care about, but in reality they only want to see an end to prosperity and the advancement of the human species. Accusing those who hold different views of not caring is remarkably cheap and, to be honest, is a low and disgusting way to try to elevate their own low self esteem.
Climate changes - get used to it, there isn't a damn thing you can do to stop it.

http://www.wmo.int/pages/mediacentre/news/documents/1075_en.pdf

To state that Co2/GHGs is not a factor in any of this at all knowing what science has already proven is not only to show an exceptional lack of scientific understanding but is to also admit that you have another agenda. The science on CO2 and its effects on temperature and amplification of the climate system is settled, even by NASA. Cherrypickers need to actually read ALL of the science and not just that which suits their own biases. To also state that this happens all of the time also shows an extreme lack of understanding of climate change effects and trends.

And as also was stated below, this catastophe which has now destroyed their crops and misplaced millions of people even in the wake of still recovering from the last one is something we need to deal with for now and the future. But you will never see or hear any denier speak of this human aspect because, well, they just don't care.

Floods in this region are hardly rare, so anyone blaming CO2 for this displays an exceptional lack of scientific understanding.

"A new NASA study suggests two of the most destructive natural disasters of 2010 were completely natural and closely linked even though they occurred 1,500 miles apart.
An abnormal Rossby wave may have sparked extreme heat and persistent wildfires in Russia as well as unusual downstream wind patterns that shifted rainfall in the Indian monsoon region and fueled heavy flooding in Pakistan."

http://www.science20.com/news_articles/rossby_waves_what_russian_fires_and_pakis...

Was the 2010 flood natural (NASA says it is) and the 2011 flood caused by man-made global warming due to man's use of fossil fuels? If so, then separate them and explain why they are different.
Pakistan August 19-31 1972, 1,500+ dead. Does anyone seriously think that CO2, which was considered at a safe level in the 1970s, was responsible for this flood?
The anti-science brigade will continue to link any weather event with man/coal/oil/cow farts, even when real evidence smacks them in the face.

damn! does anyone have a map of this? I think we are under the mistaken assumption that we can stop the changes that are happening. It has already been pointed out by 350.0rg and others that even if we stopped spewing co2 right this minute the damage is done. to late. I think we have to prepare and we aren't. Not at all. We can each do something, but the action that needs to be taken, takes community and political will. And for the most part, we lack both as a country and in the world. The rich and powerful think they can avoid the worst of it. Wrong! They say the meek will inherit the earth, but what will be left of it won't be pretty for a long time.

Weather has become a weapon in our wars.

http://www.sacbee.com/2011/09/19/3922548/islamic-relief-usa-responds-to.html

I also think this is the one aspect of climate change that gets left out of the conversation. The fact that in order to adapt and survive beyond taking action, we will have to live up to our species name and be human to one another. That seems to be lost on many in today's world. Of course, some of those who are biased, prejudiced and downright hateful in regards to those being effected here or in other areas of the world won't admit it either... they will just say the problem doesn't exist.

From the Arctic to every continent climate change/biodistress effects are making themselves known as we continue to push the envelope. But hell, let's not concentrate seriously on the urgency of the effects and what we need to do to adapt to the consequences. Let's just continue to bitch about Al Gore because he put this truth in a slide show to tell people about it because the media and much of this world is AWOL.This truly is an upside down world.