A warmer globe would lead to warmer tampers, worsening global security!

Dear Friends/Co-sailors,

In today’s pick section of my blog I am sharing this very interesting aspect of climate change as reported in the usnews.com.  Written by Seth Borenstein, AP Science Writer, this piece reports about a UN climate panel report due to be released this Monday.  Top scientists, as the report says, are saying that climate change will complicate and worsen existing global security problems, such as civil wars, strife between nations and refugees.

I have been following some of the security related issues due to climate change, especially those of climate refugees.  Hope this report will throw some new lights and be resourceful.

I also hope you would find this piece useful.

Thanks and regards,

Ranjan Panda

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Warmer temperatures can lead warmer tempers, worsening global security, UN report to say

By SETH BORENSTEIN, AP Science Writer

YOKOHAMA, Japan (AP) — In an authoritative report due out Monday a United Nations climate panel for the first time is connecting hotter global temperatures to hotter global tempers. Top scientists are saying that climate change will complicate and worsen existing global security problems, such as civil wars, strife between nations and refugees.

They're not saying it will cause violence, but will be an added factor making things even more dangerous. Fights over resources, like water and energy, hunger and extreme weather will all go into the mix to destabilize the world a bit more, says the report by the Nobel Peace Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The summary of the report is being finalized this weekend by the panel in Yokohama.

That's a big change from seven years ago, the last time the IPCC addressed how warming affected Earth, said report lead author Chris Field of the Carnegie Institution of Science in California. The summary that political leaders read in early 2007 didn't mention security issues will, he said, because of advances in research.

"There's enough smoke there that we really need to pay attention to this," said Ohio University security and environment professor Geoff Dabelko, one of the lead authors of the report's chapter on security and climate change.

For the past seven years, research in social science has found more links between climate and conflict, study authors say, with the full report referencing hundreds of studies on climate change and conflict.

The U.S. Defense Department earlier this month in its once-every-four-years strategic review, called climate change a "threat multiplier" to go with poverty, political instability and social tensions worldwide. Warming will trigger new problems but also provide countries new opportunities for resources and shipping routes in places such as the melting Arctic, the Pentagon report says.

After the climate panel's 2007 report, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon wrote that along with other causes, the conflict in the Darfur region of western Sudan "began as an ecological crisis, arising at least in part from climate change. " While the IPCC report this year downplays global warming's role in that particular strife, saying other issues were far more influential, the report's drafts do add that there is "justifiable common concern" that climate change increases the risk of fighting in similar circumstances.

"Climate change will not directly cause conflict — but it will exacerbate issues of poor governance, resource inequality and social unrest," retired U.S. Navy Adm. David Titley, now a Pennsylvania State University professor of meteorology, wrote in an email. "The Arab Spring and Syria are two recent examples."

But Titley, who wasn't part of the IPCC report, says "if you are already living in a place affected by violent conflict — I suspect climate change becomes the least of your worries."

That illustrates the tricky calculus of climate and conflict, experts say. It's hard to point at violence and draw a direct climate link — to say how much blame goes to warming and how much is from more traditional factors like poverty and ethnic differences. Then looking into future is even more difficult.

"If you think it's hard to predict rainfall in one spot 100 years from now, it's even harder to predict social stability," said Jeff Severinghaus, a climate scientist at the Scripps Institution for Oceanography who isn't part of this climate panel. "Obviously that's going to be controversial. The most important thing is that it's going to be talked about."

Source: http://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2014/03/30/un-science-report-warming-worsens-security-woes