The human health effects of global warming
No Right Turn has a nice summary of some recent research published in Nature magazine on the geographic distribution of effects of global warming. Basically, the developed world gets off lightly and all the really bad shit happens in Africa, Asia and South America:
Image from No Right Turn
However snow-melt dominated water sources are predominantly in the northern (largely developed) countries, and these places will have trouble with water shortages:
Image from No Right Turn
Isn't it odd that the damage done by the (largely northern) industrialized nations seem predominantly to impact the (largely developed) nations near the equator. How evil is that?
Image from No Right Turn
However snow-melt dominated water sources are predominantly in the northern (largely developed) countries, and these places will have trouble with water shortages:
Image from No Right Turn
Isn't it odd that the damage done by the (largely northern) industrialized nations seem predominantly to impact the (largely developed) nations near the equator. How evil is that?
posted by Alexei @ 12:36 AM
2 Comments:
At 1:40 PM,
Steve said…
I'm not sure you can make this inference from this information. Mortality rates in sub-saharan african and other third world nations I think you'll find have remained relatively static comparitively to the massive improvements in the first world.
In fact mortality rates in the third world today (I'd guess) still represent an overall improvement compared to say, a century ago, when C02 levels were obviously much lower than today.
The fact that first world rates have dropped is not a causal factor in the fact that third world rates haven't dropped as much anymore than the fact that the aussies won the cricket last night.
I think the raft of problems in third world nations have a raft of complex causes. To simply say the industrial world is at fault is simplistic and smacks of a kind of obviously flawed false Marxist-like idealism.
Having said this, I'm not entirely sure that is what you were trying to say, but if it is I tend to disagree.
At 1:56 PM,
Alexei said…
Firstly, these maps are predictions of the future, not the current state of affairs. So I was saying that, if global warming is predominantly caused by the action of industrialized nations, then isn't it ironic that the *future* mortality rates, which in these models are in part due to the effects of global warming, are going to be felt worst in the developing countries.
You said: "I think the raft of problems in third world nations have a raft of complex causes. To simply say the industrial world is at fault is simplistic and smacks of a kind of obviously flawed false Marxist-like idealism."
Yes, it is obvious that the problems in the third world are complex. It is also obvious that the industrialized nations could do a lot more but choose not to. I am not suggesting that the industrialized nations are necessarily solely responsible for the problems in the third world. But we rich folk have a massive amount of resources they could be used to solve the problem of global poverty if our governments decided to. I was trying to suggest that the humanitarian principle should be invoked and we should use our vast resources to lift Africa out of poverty. No other course of action has any decency or compassion associated with it IMHO.
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