NYT: Award Underlines Dangers Of Climate Change

[Hissyspit]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/13/world/13peaceq.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Award Underlines Danger of Climate Change

By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL
Published: October 13, 2007
The Nobel Peace Prize committee made a powerful statement today that the consequences of increasing carbon emissions could be as dangerous as the ravages of war.

The award to Al Gore and the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reflects a growing conviction on the part of scientists, politicians and economists that emissions and the global warming they produce will lead not only to more pollution but could also create economic mayhem, social upheaval and conflicts between nations or groups trying to survive in an increasingly hostile natural environment.

“This prize is an indication of the degree to which we’ve realized in the past few years that what happens in the environment is not just about natural resources but has so many different dimensions,” said Achim Steiner, executive director of the United Nations Environment Program, which helped found the intergovernmental panel. “It recognizes that changes in the environment are likely to manifest themselves in tensions and conflicts.”

Indeed, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, which has for years maintained a “Doomsday Clock” to monitor the risk of global disaster from nuclear weapons, this year increased its warning level for the first time not because of weaponry but because of the threat posed by global warming.

Some scholars believe that climate-related conflict is already upon us. “I believe there are many places that are in, or on the edge of, conflict because of climate change already, and this prize is a warning that on our current trajectory of climate change the risk will get a lot worse — these will be the conflicts of the 21st century,” said Jeffrey D. Sachs, director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University in New York.

He said that climate change had already helped ignite conflicts and wars in a swath of the world that extends from the Sudan in Africa, through the Middle East and to Afghanistan. “All of these are in dry lands that have had significant environmental stress, which is probably related to climate change,” he said.

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[opihimoimoi]

1. This is bigger/larger than war...CC will result in epic amounts of land lost to the rising sea

losing not only living/working space but of food producing areas...just as a time when Humanity is reaching 7 Billion and rising...

Result, many will perish from lack of food...errr a mega FAMINE....

Bush and his GOP should be hunted down and made to read Gores BOOK