Matthew Rothschild: Global Warming and the Pakistani Flood

[marmar]

from the Progressive:



Global Warming and the Pakistani Flood
By Matthew Rothschild, August 13, 2010


It’s impossible to look at the images coming out of Pakistan and not shake your head at the brutality of Mother Nature.

But is it Mother Nature’s fault—or our own?

Is this just a freak occurrence, or the result of global warming?

I was speaking with Brian Tokar this morning. He’s the director of the Institute for Social Ecology and the author of “Perspectives on the Climate Crisis and Social Change,” and he believes that the flood, along with recent freak weather like Russia’s drought and fires, can be traced back to our destruction of the environment.

“The weather is noticeably more chaotic,” he writes in his book, “corresponding rather closely to climate scientists’ longstanding predictions.”

In one of those predictions from 2007, the IPCC said global warming will cause “increased deaths, disease, and injury due to heat waves, floods, storms, fire, and drought.”

And while pinning any one event on global warming is tricky,

Qamar-uz-Zaman Chaudhry, director-general of the Pakistan Meteorological Department, told Reuters: "The only explanation can be the link to climate change. Because that area very rarely receives monsoon rains." ...........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.progressive.org/wx081310.html

[saltpoint]

1. I consider Matthew Rothschild to be almost a saint.

Love 'im to death.

And his mag is strictly top-door.

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