[] TL: Emerging Impacts of Climate Change SO: Greenpeace International (GP) DT: 1992 Keywords: greenpeace atmosphere climate change global warming gp reports weather / How lucky do you feel? Greenpeace International Keizersgracht 176, 1016 DW Amsterdam The first signs of the big heat Greenpeace believes that global warming is already making itself felt, and that the climate is in danger of catastrophic destabilization. CONTENTS: Learning from the frogs Rising temperatures From strange warmth to big heat Less snow, smaller glaciers, thinner ice Melting permafrost Warming seas Dying corals Rising seas Foundering islands Fanning the flames in the forest and the bush Intensifying windstorms Rising floodwaters Shifting patterns of circulation Shrivelling food supplies Revisiting old patterns of disease? The imperilling of a key industry The imperilling of economics Learning from the frogs A STRANGE THING ABOUT FROGS A frog that jumps into a pan of hot water will jump right out again. There is a story that a frog sitting in a pan of cool water being heated slowly will just sit there. It sits there when the water gets warm. It sits there when the water gets hot. It doesn't sense any danger while the danger comes in small increments. When the water boils, the frog is still sitting there. Dead. A STRANGE THING ABOUT HUMANS Our pan of water, planet Earth, is slowly heating up. Humans are pumping more and more heat-trapping 'greenhouse gases' into the atmosphere, stoking up more and more heat for the future. And although most climate scientists are pointing as vigorously to the danger as their institutional restrictions allow, we are not yet even attempting to slow down these emissions. The Earth's warming is coming in tiny increments. We don't seem, so far, to be able to sense the danger. Are we like the frog? ANOTHER STRANGE THING ABOUT FROGS Frogs have lived on the planet for 200 million years. Now they seem to be disappearing, fast. Almost everywhere biologists look, on almost every continent, frog communities are in decline. They are disappearing in urban areas, in woods and forests, in mountain areas - in every habitat frogs like. Whatever it is that is happening to them seems to be a global problem. Given the global nature of the decline, global environmental problems seem to be implicated. That is, one or all of global warming, ozone depletion or acid rain. The frog may have been a long term survivor until now, but it is also a vulnerable creature. We cannot know for sure - we probably never will know the reason for the decline of the frogs. Perhaps one of the "big three" global problems is to blame, perhaps all of them... But if we keep allowing greenhouse gases and other pollutants to build up in the atmosphere, and the Earth heats up in consequence - as NASA and other respected scientific organisations now predict - the environmental impacts could be so great that the frogs don't stand any chance of escaping the fate of the dinosaurs they outlived. EMERGING IMPACTS OF CLIMATE CHANGE? WHY CARE ABOUT A FEW FROGS? Here is one reason to care. Insects. For 200 million years frogs have been controlling insect numbers within ecosystems. In a global-warming world, insect-borne diseases and agricultural pests are expected to extend into areas that are currently free from them. Without frogs, the situation (for humans) will be even worse. Yet this is just one tiny picture in the overall gallery of global-warming impacts. And that gallery of impacts has been described, in a declaration drafted at an important international conference in Toronto during 1988, as "second only to nuclear war. " WILL WE LEARN THE LESSON? "Global warming", the "greenhouse effect" - these are terms that do not in any way reflect the danger of what we humans are doing to the atmosphere. "Climate chaos", "climate apocalypse", the "hothouse effect" - these terms would be more appropriate. We are stoking up an unliveable world, for frogs, for many, many other animal and plant species, and ultimately for humans. Rising temperatures THE HOTTEST YEARS Global average temperatures have gone up by between 0.3 and 0.6 degrees Celsius (0.5 to 1 degrees Fahrenheit) in the 140 years over which records have been kept. Anyone prepared to argue that the greenhouse gases already emitted by humans have had no noticeable heat-trapping effect has to be prepared to explain the following facts: ù the seven hottest years on record have all been since 1980 ù 1990 was the hottest year since records began ù 1991 was the third hottest year, despite the cooling effect of the huge quantities of sulphur particles (so-called 'aerosols') produced by the eruption of Mount Pinatubo ù the decade of the 1980s was fully 0.2 degrees Celsius warmer than any other decade since records began ù the most anomalously warm month (warmer than the long-term average) was in March 1990 ù not for at least seven centuries has central Europe experienced such a succession of dry and mild winters as it did between 1987 and 1990 1991 and 1992 were hot years despite the biggest natural cooling phenomenon of the century. Mount Pinatubo injected 25 to 30 million tonnes of sulphur dioxide into the stratosphere in June 1991: a huge amount, probably not exceeded since the 1883 eruption of Mount Krakatoa. The aerosols reflected large amounts of solar radiation back into space, reducing 1992 temperatures by 0.2 degrees Celsius relative to 1991. But 1992 temperatures were still well above average - the tenth-warmest year on record. Climate models suggest the volcano's cooling effect will not last long. Jim Hansen of NASA's modelling team predicted that the shade cast by the aerosols would cool the planet by about 0.5 degrees Celsius. By the end of 1992, he was bang on target. Hansen had earlier bet that one of the early years of the 1990s would break all records, and he won his bet after the decade's first year. His third bet is that greenhouse warming will become obvious to all, once the Pinatubo cooling effect subsides. How long will that take? Larry Stowe of the US National Atmospheric and Oceanographic Administration reports that the stratosphere over the tropics is nearly free of aerosols already, and anticipates that Pinatubo's influence will have faded by the end of 1993. From strange warmth to big heat WEIGHING THE ODDS Greenhouse gases trap heat. That is a fact based on simple physics. Concentrations of atmospheric greenhouse gases are rising rapidly. That is a fact based on measurements taken by sensitive instruments the world over. Greenhouse gases stay around for years, and centuries in some cases. It seems only logical to fear that heating of the planet will get worse. But some people, especially those who profit from the fossil fuels that cause the lion's share of greenhouse gas emissions, contend that nature will find a way of turning down the planet's thermostat. There is a small chance that they may just be right. With something as complex as climate, there will always be uncertainties. Uncertainties, however, cut both ways. Many scientists in fact argue that nature is more likely to turn up the planet's thermostat. And who wants to gamble on the chance that some unexpected facet of the climate will somehow come to our rescue, and dampen down the known heat-trapping power of the greenhouse gases especially when the great majority of climate scientists clearly place so little hope in that occurring? Just look at the report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), completed by more than 300 climate experts - most in government service and from many different countries - and see how worried they are. And who needs to be 100% sure that the atmosphere is heading for dangerous heating before acting - especially when waiting for absolute proof might mean waiting until it is too late to make any difference? IS IT HAPPENING ALREADY? The chairman of the influential Enquete Commission on climate change - the German Bundestag's advisory body - wrote in 1992 that "the first signs of climate change are already measurable and noticeable." But many scientists who point to the danger ahead, say that there is no actual proof yet that global warming is here, or that the climate is changing. The climate, they say, is naturally variable, and the recent hot years could still, in principle, be a coincidence. Greenpeace looks at what is happening around the world, and needs no further persuasion. It seems to us that there are many worrying indicators that the climate is already responding to the effects of our uncontrolled emissions of greenhouse gases, and that global warming is already being felt. The need to act, to stop a worrying perturbation of climate turning into catastrophic destabilisation, is imperative. Less snow, smaller glaciers, thinner ice Snow cover over the northern hemisphere has been declining over recent years. According to the World Meteorological Organisation, the extent of snow cover in the northern hemisphere was less than normally expected during every month of 1990, by an amount averaging 8-10%. Mountain glaciers are retreating almost everywhere in the world. Small wonder - ice cores in glaciers from China, Russia and Peru show that temperatures for the period between 1937 and 1987 were higher than for any 50 year period for 12,000 years. In July 1991, NASA and the US Geological Survey reported that the extent of ice in the Arctic ocean (according to satellite studies) declined by about 2% between 1978 and 1987. In 1990, the British Scott Polar Institute reported a loss of volume in the Arctic ice cap between 1976 and 1987 of at least 15% over an area of 300,000 square kilometres. The ice sheet had thinned from an average of 5.3 metres to 4.5 metres. This does not necessarily represent a general thinning: it could conceivably be due to natural variability between years. But meanwhile the pointers are not good. An international study showed maximum temperatures in the water between Svalbard and the Russian Arctic island of Severnaya Zemlya almost a degree Celsius warmer than they had been at the same depth in 1987. Over the ice cap itself, there is as yet no evidence of surface warming, based on measurements from drifting ice stations and aircraft over the past 40 years. However, this does not disprove global warming, as some in the fossil-fuel lobby have attempted to make out. According to John Walsh of the University of Illinois: "These findings ... are not necessarily at odds with climate-model projections. The drifting ice stations ... have to be sited on the thick pack ice of the central Arctic Ocean. So they do not sample the potentially sensitive marginal ice zone, where the ice retreat generally results in the greatest warming in CO2-doubling experiments of climate models." Polar bears would be at particular risk if the Arctic ice retreats. In western Hudson Bay they already appear to be under stress, bearing fewer and smaller cubs, more of which die young, than 15 years ago. Canadian Wildlife Service biologist Ian Stirling, who has studied polar bears for 20 years, claims "if the sea ice melts, they'll simply disappear." But that would be just the beginning of the problems. A world where the Arctic ice cap is melting is a world where ocean circulation would almost certainly change dramatically, altering marine ecosystems and causing climate chaos. Melting permafrost Air temperatures may not be rising above the heart of the ice cap, but over land in the far north they certainly are. Canadian and Alaskan permafrost has warmed by about 1.6 - 3.8 degrees Celsius over the last century. In Alaska during the 1980s, snow melted two weeks earlier on average than during the 1940s. In northwest Ontario over the last 20 years, air and lake temperatures have increased by 2 degrees Celsius, and the length of the ice-free season has increased by three weeks. As the temperatures have risen, the tundra seems to have stopped acting as a natural store for carbon dioxide, and become a source. This is a very dangerous development. Ecosystems like the tundra can take carbon dioxide out of the air as their plants photosynthesize, and release carbon dioxide when their plants respire. Usually, more is taken down than is released. But researchers from the University of California and the US Forest Service measured the amount of carbon dioxide flowing into and out of Alaskan tundra over five summers in the 1980s and early 1990s, and found evidence of significant net emission. They calculate that if their results apply to the entire northern high latitude belt, the tundra emitted 680 million tonnes of carbon dioxide in 1990. This is some 3% of all the carbon dioxide emitted from fossil-fuel burning that year. This is just one of many ways by which nature can amplify the greenhouse effect in a warming world, and make it more difficult for humankind to slow the global heating through reducing those emissions from fossil fuels and other sources that we can control. Warming seas WORRYING UNKNOWNS The oceans are just as important in the Earth's climatic system as the atmosphere. This is because the oceans ah sorb atmospheric heat and carbon dioxide. But major uncertainties remain about just how much heat is taken down to deeper water by currents (tending to delay overall warming), and how much less effective the oceans will be in a warming world at acting as a 'sink' and absorbing carbon dioxide (tending to enhance the greenhouse effect). Another major unknown concern involves the El Nino phenomenon. The El Nino is a climatic feature manifest in the Pacific, but with global influence, which appears to occur every 5 years or so. It causes a rearrangement of equatorial currents which brings torrential rain to western coastal Latin America, drought to Australia, and can even interrupt the Asian monsoon. Scientists do not know what causes it. The El Nino is not related to global warming, but some scientists suspect its effects might be enhanced by it. The strongest ever El Nino occurred in 1983, bringing the worst Australian drought in 2()0 years. As this booklet goes to print, eastern Australia is in the grip of an even worse drought after a second successive year under the influence of El Nino. WORRYING INDICATORS Across a large area of the western Pacific (south of Japan) the sea-surface temperature has increased by about 0.7 degrees Celsius in just the last eight years. The Japanese Maritime Safety Agency reported this finding in September 1992, claiming that it was the first demonstration of an increase in water temperature through regular observations. The researchers told journalists "... global warming phenomena has been proved by the change in the water temperature." Off the Californian coast, over the last 42 years, temperatures in the upper 100 metres of sea have risen by 0.8 degrees Celsius. Temperatures have also risen "significantly" down to depths of about 300 metres. At 500 metres, warming of about 0.1 degrees Celsius is still detectable. Dean Roemmich, from the prestigious Scripps Institution of Oceanography, observes that although this temperature signal "is not implausibly above the background level of decadal variability, the trend observed in the past 42 years is a matter for both strong concern and interest." In the Mediterranean, water below 40() metres depth maintained a more or less constant temperature throughout the first half of this century, but French scientists showed in October 1990 that there had been a trend of continuously increasing temperatures over the last 30 years. The deep layer water is 0.12 degrees Celsius warmer than it was in 1959. They commented that: "the deep water temperature trend may be the result of greenhouse- gas-induced local warming. " Dying corals CORAL BLEACHING: A KILLER OF REEFS Corals will inevitably be among the first organisms to show the consequences of a sustained increase in sea-surface temperatures. This is because of the fragile temperature- dependence of the tiny algae, called zooxanthellae, which live in the coral's cells. The coral's colour and most of its food come from these algae, so without them not only does the coral lose its colour, but it cannot feed, or build its rocky skeleton, thus arresting reef growth. While coral bleaching events occur naturally from time to time, and other stresses such as prolonged exposure to sewage and other forms of pollution have been shown to trigger bleaching, corals have already indicated their particular sensitivity to sudden sea temperature changes. Corals thrive in waters up to 28 degrees Celsius, but if exposed to temperatures just 2 to 3 degrees Celsius higher - for just two to three days - the algae are expelled from the coral. When unusually warm water struck the Galapagos reefs during the El Nino of 1983, more than 90% of the corals died in certain areas of the reef. They have not yet recovered. The death of coral reefs goes beyond the loss of one of the world's most beautiful ecosystems. Corals provide low-lying coastal areas with protection from wind and wave erosion, and provide a haven for marine life. Dying corals expose those coastal areas to severe socioeconomic effects. REEFS ARE ALREADY UNDER ASSAULT In October 1990, a group of five coral experts testified before the US Senate that disastrous coral bleaching was in progress in many areas of the Caribbean. Dr Tom Goreau from the Discovery Bay Marine Laboratory in Jamaica, said: "I am confident that the mass coral-bleaching events of the last 4 years are unprecedented as long as reefs have been studied..." Examining evidence of sea-surface temperatures from satellite readings and the few sites in the Caribbean where direct measurements had been taken during the 1980s, he and his colleagues concluded that there had been an increase in mean temperature of 0.5 - 1 degree Celsius. According to Goreau, "when Caribbean regional mass bleaching began in 1987, many, including myself, found it hard to accept that so severe an impact could be provoked by so small an increase in temperature." The experts summarised their belief that this Caribbean ecological disaster may be the first signal of global warming as follows: "we may be witnessing an early warning of global changes which should represent a serious concern for mankind." During recent years, unprecedented coral bleaching has also been observed in French Polynesia, the Andalilall Sea and elsewhere around the world. ln most of these cases, the bleaching was demonstrably associated with higher than normal sea-surface temperatures. There are clearly grounds for concern that if the warming rates forecast by the IPCC's climate models happen, then the world's coral reefs - the second most diverse ecosystem on the planet after tropical rain forests - face environmental devastation. It is anyone's guess as to how bad the consequences would he for fisheries, should coral reefs suffer such decline. Rising seas - Foundering islands A BLEAK OUTLOOK FOR COASTS AND ISLANDS As global average atmospheric temperatures have risen over the last century, so has the sea level, at a rate of 1 - 2 mm per year on average. Part of the sea level rise is due to the melting of mountain glaciers, part due to the thermal expansion of sea water. The best-guess forecast of the IPCC for sea-level rise is a global average of 3-10 mm per year. With more than 70% of the world population living on coastal plains, the implications are many and various. Take just one: the future of the mangrove swamps, which fringe about 25% of tropical coastlines, and which serve - among many of their key natural roles - as crucial nursery, feeding and spawning grounds for coastal fisheries, would be threatened. Investigations of ancient mangroves suggest that mangrove growth cannot keep pace with long-term sea-level rise of much more than 10 mm per decade. This vital ecosystem, acting as breeding and feeding grounds for many coastal marine and bird species, may well be heading for devastation unless greenhouse-gas emissions arc cut. WORRYING INDICATORS Mangroves, like coral reefs, are already showing signs of severe stress. The Hungry Bay mangrove swamp in Bermuda once extended 80 metres further into the bay than it does today. As with coral reefs, several stresses may be jointly contributing to this decline, such as storm damage and human disturbance. But in Bermuda, sea level has been rising on average by 28 mm per decade since 1930. Around the world, as much as 80% of all beaches are already suffering erosion as the sea-level rises. In Europe, for example,40 years after floods killed 1,400 in Holland and 307 in eastern England, both natural and artificial sea defences in the UK are failing under attack from the sea. The British government's 1993 national coastal strategy has conceded for the first time that thousands of acres of agricultural land must be surrendered to the sea. A 1991 survey by the National Rivers Authority showed that more than 250 miles of sea defences in England and Wales - 20% of the total - would not last another five years. In 1953, the sea flooded 150,000 acres of eastern England when gales coincided with high spring tides. Today, three quarters of a million people live in the area affected. In the United States, coastal erosion is now a severe problem in most coastal states. Chesapeake Bay, for example, has experienced spectacular erosion in recent years. There are many other areas around the world where coasts are under active attack from the sea. Many coastal cities are under threat, among them Alexandria, Venice, Shanghai and London. In populous coastal plains like those of Bangladesh and Egypt, even a minimal sea-level rise will create millions of refugees. ENTIRE CULTURES AT RISK If the IPCC's estimates of future sea level rise are correct, coral atoll nations face the real prospect of physical and cultural extinction within a matter of decades. On coral atolls the land rarely rises more than 3 metres above sea level. Coral reefs as a whole grow too slowly to keep pace with the predicted rates of sea-level rise, and in any event the major problems faced by low-lying islands would begin well before the time of total inundation. The freshwater supply on a coral island comes from a permanent "lens" of rainwater trapped immediately below ground, above saline water. With every millimetre rise in sea- level, the height of the lens shrinks by many millimetres. Once the lens becomes saline, nobody can live on the island, even though it might still appear habitable. At the international climate negotiations, the island nations of the world formed a 36-nation alliance, the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), to argue their case for reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. "We do not have the luxury of waiting for conclusive proof," their chairman told the first session of negotiations in February 1991. "The proof, we fear, will kill us." THE DAMAGE HAS ALREADY BEGUN In 1987, exceptional flooding swamped many of the islands in the Maldives, including the capital Male. President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom appealed in alarm to the United Nations, telling them that his country was at risk of complete inundation. A number of other island nations have suffered inundations. The Maldives, Kiribati and Tuvalu have lost crops due to unusually high tides and increased seawater seeping into the freshwater lens. The problems of the AOSIS countries are not limited to encroachment of the sea, the devastation of cyclones, and coral bleaching. In 1990, Tuvalu suffered an unusual four month period with only half the normal rainfall. This culminated in a water shortage so severe that it was necessary to ship water supplies to the capital. Spreading drought A GRAVE THREAT TO AGRICULTURE The US Midwest drought of 1988 served to focus huge public attention on the global warming problem for the first time. The IPCC Impacts Working Group concluded in its 1990 report that: "relatively small climatic changes can cause large water resource problems," and "change in drought risk represents potentially the most serious impact of climate change on agriculture at both regional and global levels." UNUSUALLY SEVERE DROUGHT HAS HIT MANY COUNTRIES Six successive years of drought hit California in the late 1980s and early 1990s. In December 1990, for example, no rain at all fell. The last time that had happened was in 1876. The drought ended early in 1993, paradoxically with severe storms and massive floods. According to the British Institute of Hydrology, the five-year British drought of the late 1980s and early 1990s was "the most severe in the lowlands since the prolonged drought of 1897 to 1903. " 1990 was a year of unprecedented, Europe-wide, drought. The UK felt its hottest-ever temperatures. In meteorological terminology, the southeast of England experienced an almost Mediterranean-type pattern of weather, while the Mediterranean suffered from drought akin to that of the sub-Saharan regions. Problems for agriculture and water supply were compounded by the fact that it was the second consecutive year of drought. In Athens, for example, rainfall in 1989 was 40% of the normal; in Marseille, less than half of the normal; in Britain, by the end of 1989, flow in many rivers was the lowest on record. In May 1992, as a heat wave swept France compounding a fourth year of drought similar to that of southeast England, the French Environment Minister went on TV to announce emergency conservation measures. Drought in Spain led to similar measures. Southern Africa meanwhile was labouring in the grip of the worst drought in living memory, raising dire new social problems. In August 1992, violent conflict broke out between park wardens and local people wanting to graze their starving cattle on game reserves. Zambia introduced electricity rationing in September 1992. The Zambia Electricity Supply Corporation (ZESCO) announced that the devastating effect of the drought on the Karaiba and Ithezi-tezi dams meant long and daily power cuts, and that if the rains failed in December there could be a complete power blackout. Severe drought also hit northeast Brazil, and by 1993 was in its fourth successive year. Hundreds of starving peasants began plundering government warehouses and supermarkets, creating international headlines. Fanning the flames in the forest and the bush AN INSURER'S VIEW OF ENHANCED DROUGHT Reinsurance giant Swiss Re now has a special Greenhouse Effect Project Team. The team concluded in a 1992 study that many regions of the world would experience reduced rainfall if the greenhouse effect is enhanced, that drought would spread, and with it the risk of bush fires and forest fires. "THE FIRES OF THE FUTURE" In April 1987, one of the largest fires in recorded history erupted in tinder-dry larch forest in eastern Siberia. It destroyed the town of Xilinji and over 11 million hectares of Siberian forest. In the summer of 1988, after practically no rain in June, July or August, almost half the forest in Yellowstone Park was lost to fires. In 1989, it was Canada's turn. Drought in Manitoba led to the loss of 2.7 million hectares of forest to the worst fires ever experienced in that state. Some 5% of Manitoba's land area was affected, and over 25,000 people, from dozens of Manitoba towns, became refugees. In October 1991, at the height of the Californian drought, a devastating fire struck the hills near Oakland. The East San Francisco Bay fire was the third biggest fire in US history, with an insurance price tag of at least $ 1.2 billion, and economic losses which may well have topped twice that figure. It hit an area of mixed forest-and-home development, with a high proportion of combustible shrub, which made the fire spread as though in a forest and cause the same damage as though in a city. Swiss Re sent a team of investigators to the site within three days. Their conclusions: "This fire may well prove to be a harbinger of a new type of catastrophe that could reoccur on an even larger scale in the US, western Europe or in any other economically advanced industrialised nations.... The issue at stake is best illustrated with the term coined by the American fire fighters at the occasion of the East Bay hills fire. They called it 'the fire of the future'. " Could the drought have had anything to do with the fire? That goes without saying. But could global warming have had anything to do with it? Said Swiss Re: "We ... cannot entirely rule out the possibility that the East Bay hills fire was at least encouraged by these global rises in temperature, even though there is no concrete indication of this development to date." Intensifying windstorms METEOROLOGISTS AND INSURERS ALIKE FEAR INCREASED STORMINESS Many climate scientists expect that global warming will increase the frequency and severity of storms. A recent modelling exercise by the Australian CSlRO's Division of Atmospheric Research suggested that doubling atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations would more than double the Yearly Genesis Parameter, a factor used by climatologists to estimate the number of storms per year. Professor Kerry Emanuel of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has estimated that a rise in the global average temperature of 3 degrees Celsius would boost the intensity and destructive power of a cyclone by 40%. The insurance industry's analysts are also extremely worried about the scope for increased storminess in the future. A 1990 assessment by the world's largest reinsurance company, Munich Re, predicted that areas previously unaffected by full-scale hurricanes, such as western Europe, soon might be. Swiss Re's research team pointed in their 1992 report to the catastrophic consequences of a full-scale hurricane over Manhattan or Tokyo, something which would become ever more likely in a world in the grip of global warming. THE SUSPICIOUS DESTRUCTIVENESS OF RECENT TROPICAL CYCLONES Unusually intense cyclones have been hitting the Caribbean and the Pacific in recent years. In the Caribbean they follow a period without severe hurricanes from the 1960s to the mid 1980s. Hurricane Gilbert of September 1988 had the lowest pressure in its core of any recorded hurricane (i.e. it was the strongest hurricane ever recorded), and killed 300, leaving a million homeless. Hurricane Hugo of September 1989 was a catastrophe not just for the Caribbean but for the southeast coast of the USA. Causing more than $8 billion worth of damage, it was at that time one of the most expensive disasters in US history. A leading US meteorologist, Dr William Gray, predicted that more hurricanes of the Hugo variety would hit the US mainland in the years to come. After what the World Meteorological Organisation classified as an unusually tranquil hurricane season in 1991, Hurricane Andrew of August 1992 caused damage of up to $30 billion along the coasts of Florida and Louisiana, and became easily the most expensive natural disaster in US history. In the South Pacific, cyclones have hit with increasing frequency in recent years, and seem to be causing more damage than in many decades. Fiji was hit by an average of 3.1 per decade between 1940 and 1980; 10 occurred between 1981 and 1989. Tuvalu was hit by an average of three per decade between 1940 and 1980; eight occurred in the 1980s. Cyclone Ofa of February 1990 was one of the most devastating cyclones to hit the region since records began in 1831. Cyclone Ofa was outstripped in ferocity by Cyclone Val of December 1991, which devastated Western Samoa for the second year running. In August 1992, Cyclone Iniki hit Hawaii, causing $1.4 billion in insured losses, and Cyclone Omar hit Guam, the strongest cyclone there in 16 years. In January 1993, Cyclone Kina was Fiji's second in four weeks, and worst for 20 years. THE SUSPICIOUS DESTRUCTIVENESS OF RECENT MID-LATITUDE WINDSTORMS Unusually intense storms have not been limited to the tropics. Freak windstorms of enormous destructiveness have hit both sides of the Atlantic in recent years. Catastrophic windstorms tore through Europe in October of 1987 and January and February of 1990, creating a total of more than $12 billion in insured losses, and flattening millions of trees. The "Great Nor'easter of 1992" flooded the New York subway in December of that year, causing it to be closed down for the first time in its history. The storm caused $650 million in insured losses. One of the worst storms in living memory, it dragged houses into the sea, caused havoc along 600 miles of coastline and killed nine people. A state of emergency was declared in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. Within three months an even more intense winter storm swept from Cuba to Canada, killed more than 200 people, and clocked up more than a billion dollars in insured losses. STILL FURTHER SUSPICIOUS METEOROLOGICAL PHENOMENA The North Atlantic has become dramatically rougher over the past 30 years, with waves increasing in height by 30 per cent. More and more scientists are now sticking their necks out on the potential linkage between strong windstorms and global warming. For example, in January 1993 Dr John Gould of the UK's Institute of Oceanographic Sciences had this to say when the deepest-ever depression hit the British Isles (by strange coincidence, breaking up the oil tanker Braer on the rocks off Shetland): "coupled with the storms of 1987 and 1990, there is evidence that we seem to be entering an era of strong storms, which might be associated with global warming." Rising floodwaters MORE DROUGHT, AND MORE FLOOD TOO More drought and flood seems like a contradiction, at first sight. But it is exactly what climate models predict for a world in the grip of greenhouse heating. A warmer atmosphere would contain a higher concentration of water vapour, and hence in general there would be more precipitation around the world. Meanwhile, where - and when - there was less rain, conditions would tend to be more parched than is the case today. The 1992 Swiss Re Greenhouse Effect Project Team report concluded that "over middle to high latitudes the processes of convection will tend to accelerate and intensify. More and more abundant rainfalls of shorter duration are expected and, therefore, also more inundations." If winter precipitation leads to more snow, and the snow melting coincides with intensive spring rains, the overlap could lead to an "extreme" increase in the risk of inundation. A further factor that acts to intensify flooding is deforestation. The cutting down of trees, whether for firewood in the Himalayas or to make roads in the Alps, allows more runoff, and that means more floods. ARE FLOODS BECOMING MORE DESTRUCTIVE? Floods in the Punjab and the Northwest Frontier Provinces of Pakistan caused havoc for two weeks during September 1992. Environment Minister Anwar Saifullah said that the estimate for damage to the Pakistani economy could exceed US $2 billion. At least 2,000 people were reported killed by the floods and landslides, which were triggered by heavy rains in the north of the country. Nearly 3.2 million people were displaced in the Punjab and 1.7 million hectares of agricultural land inundated. Tropical - type downpours caused serious flooding in England during September 1992. Severe flooding has occurred as a result of excessive rainfall in recent years in a number of countries, including China, France and Iran. Shifting patterns of circulation WILL CLIMATIC CHANGE BE SLOW AND STEADY OR ABRUPT? In recent years, scientists investigating climatic changes of past eras have come up with evidence that dramatic changes can occur within a matter of years. Ice cores in Greenland suggest that, on a number of occasions in past millenia, regional temperatures rose by as much as 7 degrees Celsius within as little as a few decades. Such dramatic warming, the researchers concluded, could only be produced by abrupt reorganisation of ocean currents. DO PRESENT CLIMATIC PATTERNS SUGGEST ABRUPT CHANGE? It has recently become clear that a decade-long change in climate hit the Pacific beginning in 1976. The principal changes involved a 1.5 degrees Celsius warming in Alaska, and unusually high waves consistently battering the California coast. The cause was the intensification of a low pressure system, normally to be found hanging over the southwestern tip of the Aleutians, shifting eastward towards North America. What caused that, nobody knows. Meanwhile, a large patch of abnormally low-salinity water in the North Atlantic, discovered in 1968 and named the Great Salinity Anomaly, has been invoked by some oceanographers as a potential explanation for general cooling in the North Atlantic region during the 1960s. Kirk Bryan and Ron Stouffer of Princeton suspect it may have affected deep-water formation as it drifted around the North Atlantic, reducing the density of northern surface waters enough to slow sinking of the warmer water, and putting a brake on the northward movement of warm water. A National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration oceanographer, Sidney Levitus, commented: "Ten years ago we didn't have the evidence for these decade-scale changes. Now they're showing up everywhere. It's just amazing what's going on." Science magazine reported that the discovery of these changes "is raising concerns about the Earth's climatic future. Could oceanic shifts and the climate changes they bring be masking greenhouse warming, perhaps lulling us into complacency? Could greenhouse warming somehow be at the root of such decades-long climate shifts? Will greenhouse warming itself come in disruptive jumps?" Shrivelling food supplies THE FORECAST IS POOR A recent report for the UN has forecast a significant decline in grain yields in Africa, tropical Latin America and much of India and SE Asia as the atmosphere warms. According to the latest models from the UK Met Office and NASA's Goddard Lab, most of the world's important food crops would be harmed by global warming. The Met Office model also infers reduced yields in North America, which the author of the report, Oxford's Professor Martin Parry, believes would substantially raise grain prices. Parry's study differs from another oft-quoted study he completed just two years previously. Said Parry, "the change is much more negative than I had previously guessed. ...Within 50 years, one in eight of the world's population could be at risk of famine". Agronomists fear that warmer winters will allow proliferation of crop pests. The Director of the Scottish Crop Research Institute, John Hillman, for . example, points to warmer winters as a "green bridge" that will allow a range of pests, which normally die out in colder temperatures, to survive. THE WARNING SIGNS ARE THERE Early in 1990, world grain reserves fell to just 60 days after the poor harvest in the drought-affected US in 1988, and an earlier poor harvest in India in 1987. According to agronomist Lester Brown of the US Worldwatch Institute, if the harvest had been as bad in 1989, world grain prices would have increased by two to three times; the resulting shock waves in the world economy would have dwarfed the oil crisis of 1973, particularly in countries such as Russia and Egypt, which are reliant on cheap imported grain. Aphids, which spread many plant diseases, flew weeks early after the exceptionally mild British winter of 1990, carrying disease to young plants. The UK's Agricultural and Food Research Council's Institute of Arable Crop Research predicts that they will fly six weeks earlier than 'normal' by 2050. In May of 1993, a plague of alien moth larvae, which had been building since 1976, reached a peak in southern England. The brown-tail moth is a voracious destroyer of trees, and is poisonous, causing conjunctivitis and asthma attacks in humans. It is normally confined to continental Europe. An entomologist from the Natural History museum advanced global warming as a possible reason for their spread. Other potential insect plagues include horn flies in the US, which already kill large numbers of cattle, and the tsetse fly, currently endemic only in Africa. Says Noel Brown of UNEP: "What about the tsetse fly in Arizona? These things are likely to happen and they could create very serious problems." Over the past four years, African horse sickness has proliferated in Spain following a series of warm winters that have allowed Culicoides midges, carriers of the virus responsible, to survive. This disease kills as many as 95% of the animals infected, and is now endemic year-round in Spain. The UK's Agriculture and Food Research Council anticipates that global warming would increase the significance of the disease in the UK. Revisiting old patterns of disease? PREPARATIONS FOR THE WORST According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), "global warming could cause the spread of malaria and other tropical diseases to millions of people presently free of them." Malaria already threatens 2,100 million people, and 270 million are infected. Each year there are more than 100,000 new cases, and in Africa alone malaria kills half a million children a year. "The organisation's task group of independent experts has recommended that national health authorities prepare for the possible consequences of the greenhouse effect, and launch education campaigns to alert the general public to them....Local changes that increase warmth and rainfall are 'highly likely' to create more favourable conditions for the insects, allowing them to breed in much larger numbers, and live longer ... Some areas which before were free of insects may become breeding zones; and epidemics among non-immune populations caused by imported malaria parasites may occur.. " A 1993 British government health report suggested that malaria and other tropical diseases, and even bubonic plague could be reintroduced to the UK as a result of global warming. The Public Health Laboratory Service report identified the spread of mosquitos and other vectors as the main problem. Sea level rise might, for example, create brackish coastal marshes in which malarial mosquitos could proliferate. Plasmodium vivax last broke out in the Kent marshes in the early 1950s. Development of the most dangerous form, P. falciparum, requires an optimum temperature of 26 degrees Celsius. Such may soon be common in southern Europe. Diseases classified by W.H.O. as likely to spread under global warming conditions include: Malaria: highly likely Schistosomiasis, or snail fever: very likely Dengue fever: very likely Lymphatic filariasis, or elephantiasis: likely Onchocerciasis, or river blindness: likely African trypanosomiasis, or sleeping sickness: likely Japanese encaphalitis: expected Leishmaniasis (Oriental sore): possible Also at risk of spreading in a worse-case analysis, combining direct with indirect effects: tuberculosis, leprosy, measles and other childhood diseases. The imperilling of a key industry The insurance business provides a graphic example of how vulnerable we are to climate change - even indoors. The insurance business is currently worth $1.3 trillion annually, worldwide. It is bigger than the oil business, bigger even than the arms business. Can it stay that way, given the kind of catastrophes it will be having to deal with if the climate is destabilizing? The fundamental requirement for a successful insurer, whether setting the rates for premiums, or estimating the maximum loss to which he or she is exposed, is to be able to use the past record - of windstorms, storm surges, bush fires, or whatever - as a guide to the future. Unfortunately, climate change removes the ability to do this. Already, there are reasons for profound concern. 1966 to 1987 was a period that involved no catastrophe losses which topped the billion-dollar mark (in 1992 dollars). But in the period 1987 to April 1993 there were no less than 11 windstorm catastrophes for which insured losses each exceeded $1 billion. Together, they involved a payout of almost $50 billion. In the face of that record, a growing number of insurance industry practitioners need no persuasion that climate change could be underway, and more importantly, that a far worse catalogue of catastrophe is likely in the future. The Head of Munich Re's Geoscience Research Group, Dr Gerhard Berz, is prominent among them. He wrote recently that "today there are more and more alarming factors indicative of the gradual but noticeable increase in the worldwide temperatures." And the end result of this for the industry? "In areas of high insurance density the loss potential of individual catastrophes can reach a level where the national and international insurance industries run into serious capacity problems." Capacity means the money that insurance companies keep in order to be able to meet the payment of claims filed. If the company is exposed to claims which exceed its capacity, it goes bankrupt. This is precisely what happened to a number of US insurance companies in the wake of Hurricane Andrew and Cyclone Iniki in 1992. Greenpeace has spoken to people at the top of the insurance industry in both London and Zurich who fear for the very future of the insurance industry. Their worst-case scenario is one in which the climate destabilizes to such an extent that insurers face, as one of them told us, "a machine-gun fire of catastrophe." In that event, the reinsurance market would implode for want of capital and confidence. The direct insurance market would in consequence shrivel. The world's biggest business would have been reduced to a shadow of its current self. The imperilling of economies CHANGE IS COMING - ONE WAY OR ANOTHER Business lobbyists tend to say that cutting greenhouse gas emissions will lose jobs, and imperil economies. (They ignore many studies that suggest exactly the reverse - that renewable and efficient energy is labour intensive, and more often than not cheaper than existing means of producing energy.) These defenders of the status quo are scared of change, but what they are being blind to is that great change is on the way whatever we do. Do they seriously think that doubling today's atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations won't lose jobs and imperil economies? In a world where food production is under assault from "impacts second only to nuclear war?" In a world where tensions are exploding as nations fall out over diminishing water supplies and literally hundreds of millions of ecological refugees roam the planet? Meanwhile, the game of roulette we play with greenhouse gases goes on. It does so at a time when the challenge of feeding the world is compounded by eroding topsoils, diminishing ground water reservoirs, and an exploding population, following the first-ever decade wherein the amount of land under cultivation failed to increase. Isn't it time for emergency action? Concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are continuing to increase as a result of human activity, but climate chaos can he avoided. Is it not time policy makers took real action?