Danger... Global warming implicated in GENOCIDE

[Piggs]

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said that the slaughter in Darfur was triggered by global climate change and that more such conflicts may be on the horizon, in an article published Saturday.
"The Darfur conflict began as an ecological crisis, arising at least in part from climate change," Ban said in a Washington Post opinion column.

UN statistics showed that rainfall declined some 40 percent over the past two decades, he said, as a rise in Indian Ocean temperatures disrupted monsoons.

"This suggests that the drying of sub-Saharan Africa derives, to some degree, from man-made global warming," the South Korean diplomat wrote.

"It is no accident that the violence in Darfur erupted during the drought," Ban said in the Washington daily.

When Darfur's land was rich, he said, black farmers welcomed Arab herders and shared their water, he said.

With the drought, however, farmers fenced in their land to prevent overgrazing.

"For the first time in memory, there was no longer enough food and water for all. Fighting broke out," he said.

A UN peacekeeping force may stop the fighting, he said, and more than two million people may return to rebuilt homes in safe villages.


"But what to do about the essential dilemma: the fact that there's no longer enough good land to go around?"

"Any real solution to Darfur's troubles involves sustained economic development," perhaps using new technologies, genetically modified grains or irrigation, while bettering health, education and sanitation, he said.

Sudan is not the only country with such problems, Ban said, and pointed to Somalia, Ivory Coast and Burkina Faso as African countries with "food and water insecurity."

Khartoum agreed this week to accept 23,000 UN and African Union peacekeepers after four years of fighting, which has killed at least 200,000 people.



Article Here

[Penta]

This is tin-foil hat material? It's well-known that the drought and subsequent competition for land is at the root of the violence in Darfur. (Which is one reason why the military option won't work.) And there'll be far more catastrophes unless we all start working together to reduce emissions.

Even tiny things can seriously damage modern economies. Take the drought in Spain, which means the rivers are depleted and warmer; jellyfish are attracted to the warmer water at the coasts; thousands of tourists get stung by jellyfish; numbers of tourists to Spanish beach resorts go down. Result; a serious threat to the Spanish economy in which tourism is a if not the major industry. (It's not all down to global warming, as there are also far more jellyfish because of overfishing of tuna, and reducing numbers of turtles - caught in nets; their breeding beaches developed - which are their principal predators.)

[Piggs]

I was under the impressoin that in Africa, shitty untrained farmers that have no idea how to maintain land, and rotate crops was the cause of dessertification. Letting the former farms decline into wasteland and eventually becoming desert. Since deserts do not hepl the rain fall totals, I was under the impression this was what whas the culpret....Unless global warming was caused by the terrible farming practices in Africa. oh yeah, and when I was a wee lad living there, American scientists were warning us that acid rain would kill us all, and also a vague threat of a new ice age. Global warming is just the boggy-man-de-jour.

Don't be mad, and I swear I'm not trolling in that response, I just find it funny.

[yorick]

I think its all part of the process Mr.Piggs. The Sahara desert was man-made from the git-go, developed and done even by antient aegyptians and their anscestrals that we otherwise want to put on pedestals. Has little or nothing to do with those one might call laughably inept at agricultural pursuits in this modern day'n age. Whats going on today is the same old theme developed through aeons reaching waay back now hyper accelerated and threatening to arrive at culmination much as Orwell, Huxley, Vonnegut predicted and prophesied it would.

Penta, the good news is that UN Peacekeepers are on the march. Pity there's so much beauraucracy volved that prevents em from increasing their ranks ten-fold. Makes sense to me they oughta be well funded with open recruiting stations across the board. But difficult for them to compete with more lucrative opportunities offered by sanctioned independent militia groups doing as they damned well please.

Otherwise a delightful comparison of poltical envionments with beach economies in Southern Spain. Must ask ourselves who are the jellyfish and who are the turtles, nevermind the tuna. And to what extent has the earth herself become "tourist" to human management, manipulation and allocation of her resources?

Meanwhile all along along I've been advocating on behalf of healthy natural disasters to keep the species in check. And have repeatedly stated how self-indulgent human beings have become at thinking we can create our own downfall through use of weaponry and bad diplomacy alone. I think secretly we all oughta enjoy gettin our asses kicked by tsunamis, hurricanes, earth-quakes and whatnot. Hell, I'm the first to be beggin to git where I'm goin with boots on the ground.




(:=

[nowonmai]

All very logical Yorick. I just hope that the billions of dead required to reorder the world don't include me and my tribe. Anyone would think that life is a zero sum game and there was me thinking that socialism would solve everything.