by Keith Locke
I didn’t hear any climate change denial in Cuba. In fact, the environment ministry people outlined to me a detailed climate change adaption programme. They calculate that if there is an 85 cm sea level rise by 2100 twenty one communities by the sea will disappear, and many others will be badly affected. They dazzled me with colour coded maps and statistics about which coral reefs, mangroves, beaches and communities will be affected and what needs to be done over the next decades. It’s not just the sea level rise they are worried about. Every year hurricanes create waves which swamp coastal communities, and the heating of the sea that accompanies climate change will make these waves bigger and more frequent.
Hurricanes are the main focus of attention at the national centre for civil defence which I visited. For some years they have successfully avoided loss of life by being one step ahead of the storms as they gather around the Caribbean, and initiating community evacuations. Now they are paying attention to possible earthquakes, worried that the fault line responsible for the big Haiti quake might extend to Cuba. They were interested in how New Zealand has responded to the two Christchurch earthquakes. The months of aftershocks make earthquakes a different kettle of fish from hurricanes. Both disasters have a huge impact on families and communities, but after most hurricanes you can pretty safely begin the process of rebuilding.
Published in Environment & Resource Management by Keith Locke on Tue, May 31st, 2011
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on the trolls and those who are unable to keep on topic
During hurricane Katrina there were quite a number of fatalities in New Orleans yet only four people were killed in Cuba. I will do a search on that one but it didn’t look good for the Bush government.
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At some point ‘climate change adaptation’ will be more important than ‘measures to reduce climate change’. But I don’t know when that point will be, or even if it’s been.
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What about the thousands who have been liquidated by the state over the years.
http://www.autentico.org/oa09843.php
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There is certainly the additional problem that a dollar spent on adaptation is one not spent on avoidance, so it will likely become tougher to transform society to low carbon the longer we wait.
Yet another reason to get off our asses and do what’s needed right now.
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Seriously? Keith Locke pimps for Cuba? Again? You’re lucky he’s retiring!
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Just wondering what the panic is all about when global temperatures have been stable or declining since 1998.
“I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (i.e. from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline”.
- Prof Phil Jones, AGW fundamentalist, University of East Anglia
And isn’t Cuba a shining beacon of respect for human rights! Wasn’t that Che Guevara a great guy! Behold some of his pearls of wisdom:
“A revolutionary must become a cold killing machine motivated by pure hate.”
“To send men to the firing squad, judicial proof is unnecessary.”
“The Negro is indolent and lazy, and spends his money on frivolities, whereas the European is forward-looking, organized, and intelligent.”
“Mexicans are a band of illiterate Indians.”
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@Richard M 8:35 AM
Do try to keep up. Phil Jones was exonerated with an official investigation finding the CRU’s “analyses have been repeated and the conclusions have been verified.”
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” it is possible that point will never be reached”
Anything is possible. We are the party which has the most dreamers (given Mana ain’t a party)
” the additional problem that a dollar spent on adaptation is one not spent on avoidance”
That’s true too but I guess it works both ways
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I like the sound of that.
Of course your logic relies on the assumption that a dollar spent on avoiding global warming actually has an affect on global warming.
“Avoid climate change, avoid adaptation costs”
Maybe we can avoid CC. Or maybe we can delay things a bit. Or maybe we can’t fight Mother Nature. There are too many people burning too much oil. I know cos I am one of them. Mother Nature has a plan to sort this.
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Regardless of politics its refreshing to see a country like Cuba tackle climate change more maturely than other countries
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Valis says “A dollar spent on avoidance is worth many more dollars later in adaptation dollars not needed.”
Where’s the proof? Maybe it will cost $10 of avoidance to save $1 of adaption.
We’re worried about a 0.5 – 2m rise in sea level in the next century.
Pretty much all the seaside infrastructure we have wasn’t here 100 years ago, so if we plan to replace it at higher levels over the next 100 years, maybe it won’t cost us much at all to adapt.
Also, we’re worried at a pretty small increase in sea levels – last month I was at a place that will have an 11m (eleven metre) sea level rise. It gets it twice a day, every day, right now.
Or maybe mitigation is cheaper. Where’s the financial analysis? (and I realise there more to it than mere economics – I’m just interested in seeing the costings)
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Here is a summary http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2006/oct/30/economy.uk in which it says
Economic impacts
· The benefits of strong, early action considerably outweigh the costs.
· Unabated climate change could cost the world at least 5% of GDP each year; if more dramatic predictions come to pass, the cost could be more than 20% of GDP.
· The cost of reducing emissions could be limited to around 1% of global GDP; people could be charged more for carbon-intensive goods.
· Each tonne of CO2 we emit causes damages worth at least $85, but emissions can be cut at a cost of less than $25 a tonne.
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Thanks for that Rimu.
I suppose one problem with working out the costs, is that they will be very uneven – some countries will pay dearly, and others not so much. Some places may even benefit (climate where I live is much colder than I like)
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@toad
I am aware of the Phil Jones ‘exoneration’. But then why would an innocent man fudge the data to ‘hide the decline’?
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No, it hasn’t been cooling since 1998. Even if we ignore long term trends and just look at the record-breakers, that wasn’t the hottest year ever. Different reports show that, overall, 2005 was hotter than 1998. What’s more, globally, the hottest 12-month period ever recorded was from June 2009 to May 2010.
More science at http://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-stopped-in-1998.htm
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There are a number of misconceptions concerning Phil Jones’ email. When one takes the time to read the email and understand the science discussed, the misconceptions are easily put into proper context.
The decline actually refers to a decline in tree growth at certain high-latitude locations since 1960.
Tree-ring growth has been found to match well with temperature and hence tree-rings are used to plot temperature going back hundreds of years. However, tree-rings in some high-latitude locations diverge from modern instrumental temperature records after 1960. This is known as the “divergence problem”. Consequently, tree-ring data in these high-latitude locations are not considered reliable after 1960 and should not be used to represent temperature in recent decades.
More at http://www.skepticalscience.com/Mikes-Nature-trick-hide-the-decline.htm
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“My god . They are worried about losing a couple of people in storms.
What about the thousands who have been liquidated by the state over the years.
http://www.autentico.org/oa09843.php”
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Now I can understand misguided Marxist looking on communism as some kind of utopia. What I Can’t believe is five people condoning the state liquidating its citizens to achieve that end.
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According to a 2007 report summarised in “New Scientist”, Cuba is the only country to have improved its standard of living without degrading its environment. Their human rights record is not impressive, but then I would be interested in how many people were wiped out in New Orleans in 2005 through what amounts to criminal incompetence.
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Liberty,
Climate change adaptation and human rights (or lack of) are different issues. Your linking of these two unrelated issues is probably what is getting you voted down. If you want to discuss Cuba’s climate change adaptation program, do it here, if you want to discuss Cuba’s human rights record, perhaps raise it on the general discussion forum? By keeping on topic, you are much more likely to get your views heard.
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Samiuela
You are correct my post is off topic. That was intentional to show up the hypocrisy of supporting Cuba.
A country that has an appalling human rights record.
Maybe human right don’t rate very high in Green philosophy any more. Do Slugs and snails have a higher value than the achievement of man?
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Liberty,
There is no hypocrisy in writing about (and presumably supporting) Cuba’s response to the potential threat of climate change. Indeed, the fact that the measures described are happening in Cuba is almost irrelevant; it could just as well have been any other country. Cuba’s human rights record has absolutely nothing to do with this issue. Surely it is possible to support the good aspects of any country, but not the bad aspects?
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Samiula
Surely it is possible to support the good aspects of any country, but not the bad aspects”
Do you mean like Norman showed with the Chinese delegation?
http://tvnz.co.nz/politics-news/norman-clashes-chinese-delegation-3595942
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