Fear of a Desert Planet

Brad Plumer gives us something more to worry about:

On a related note, the United Nations released a new report today, concluding that a whole bunch of fertile land will probably crumble into desert within the next generation, especially in Africa and Central Asia--creating an "environmental crisis of global proportions." About 50 million people are at risk of displacement. (A fifth of the population of Mali, for instance, already moves to Ivory Coast during drought years.) Some African countries, presumably, will have to give up trying to feed themselves and start importing food. Not all of that is due to climate change, but some of it is.

I had known something along these lines was going on, but 50 million is an awful lot of people when you focus your mind on it.

Photo by Flickr user Gary.Fotu under a Creative Commons license

Comments

A certain amount of desertification is cyclical, but models show that the increase in temps due to GW will cause more rain to fall over oceans and less over land, and that what rain that falls will come in large bursts. (Say Hey, Texas!)

Sea level rise is where the drama is. Changes in rainfall is where the tragedy lies.

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | June 29, 2007 12:41 PM

Re: but models show that the increase in temps due to GW will cause more rain to fall over oceans and less over land,

Odd that this has not been the case in previous warm-up episodes in the Earth's history. Desertification is usually associated with cool-downs not warm-ups (though to be sure local desertification may occur if wind patterns shift). For example in the Pliocene (the period just before the most recent Ice Age cycle began) forests covered the Great Plains and even much of the Southwest.

Posted by JonF | June 29, 2007 12:50 PM

A further complication is that global warming has greatly reduced the snowpack on high mountains --and will reduce it even further. The people of Los Angeles who depend on water from snowmelt in the Sierras -- or the people in Montana living off water from the Rocky Mountains -- may find George Bush's fuzzy science less amusing in the future.

Plus, the Middle East will be hurt badly by the increase in heat from global warming. As has been widely noted, the USA is the main contributor to that effect. Any idea on how that will affect Al Qaeda's recruiting success?

Posted by Don Williams | June 29, 2007 1:41 PM

It's actually worse than you think and closer to home. The Ogallala Aquifer feeds the western mid-west with most of its irrigation water. It being emptied at a terrifying rate. If were possible to short real estate, you should short this area, it will be untenable in 50-75 years.

If you want to read the most engaging book ever on a seemingly dry (pun intended) topic, read "Cadillac Desert" by Marc Reisner.

Posted by Batojar | June 29, 2007 1:44 PM

Where's Frank Herbert when you need him? Personally, I'm just looking forward to the reemergence of Shai-Hulud.

Posted by IP Guy | June 29, 2007 1:51 PM

Australia is another marginal area being hit hard by global warming. It has been suffering a multi-year severe drought and some scientist have projected that Australia's situation will only get worse.

Which explains why Australian Rupert Murdoch decided last month to have Fox News proclaim the dangers of global warming and to push for lessening of carbon emissions. See http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18746241/

An excerpt:
"Last week, the media mogul pledged not only to make his News Corp. empire carbon neutral, but to persuade the hundreds of millions of people who watch his TV channels and read his newspapers to join the cause. Messages about climate change will be woven throughout News Corp.'s entertainment content, he said, from movies to books to TV sitcoms, and the issue will have an increasing presence in the company's news coverage, be it in the New York Post or on Hannity & Colmes.

Yes, as Murdoch told Grist in an exclusive interview on his climate plan, even Fox News' right-wing firebrand Sean Hannity can be expected to come around on the issue."
-------

Ha ha ha. Sean Hannity has gone out of his way to ridicule those who warn of global warming-- people like Al Gore.

So the image of Rupert Murdoch twisting Sean's testicles and forcing Sean to publicly eat crow is hilarious.

Posted by Don Williams | June 29, 2007 1:54 PM

Re "Where's Frank Herbert when you need him?"
--------

"The Oil Must Flow"

Posted by Don Williams | June 29, 2007 1:57 PM

Don't worry, nature will take care of this.

Either GW will close a feed-back loop to kill the organisms responsible for the CO2 emissions, or it will not. If it does not (an admittedly unlikely scenario), there is no problem.

Even if it does, some populations will take the brunt of it, while others get off relatively lightly. If you are one of the lucky, there is no problem.

If you are one of the unlucky, past experience indicates that the lucky will find some rationalization to allow them not to worry about your fate, in which case, there is still no problem.

I suppose it is possible in an abstract way, that people will see the danger of our way of life in time to actually prevent the consequences, but I find this to be the least plausible scenario of all. For this to happen, three conditions must occur simultaneously:

1) Consequences are immediate and terrifying.
2) There is a connection between 1) above, and our way of life that even the dullest mind cannot deny.
3) This occurs in a timely fashion, while action is still useful.

The climate is a massive system, with large time lags. By the time 1) and 2) are true, 3) will almost certainly be false.

Posted by RLaing | June 29, 2007 2:37 PM

I give a 30-50 percent chance that the population of the world will be 2 billion in 2100. Most will likely die in war. The 21st will make the 20th Century look placid.

Tyler Cowen sincerely questioned if we should be talking about this. It was a serious, and not completely callous, question. Somebodies are gonna hafta die

Posted by bob mcmanus | June 29, 2007 5:48 PM

1. Desertification issues are a good argument for lifting food subsidies in the US and EU - build up agricultural regions in Africa, etc.

2. Also a good argument for building up nuclear plant building and running efficiency - for desalinization, shipping water from wet areas to dry areas.

3. Also a good argument for birth control, abortion on demand world wide, and heavy emphasis on restricting families (economically) to 2 kids (or less).

4. Getting world population down to 2-3 billion in 2100 is simple, in theory, if the Chinese approach is adopted (one child per family). A bit challenging in practice, but worth considering for places like India (without forced sterilization or abortions).

5. Glad to hear Murdoch is on board about dealing with global warming.

Posted by cfw | June 29, 2007 6:41 PM

Posted by Don Williams | June 29, 2007 1:41 PM:"The people of Los Angeles who depend on water from snowmelt in the Sierras -- or the people in Montana living off water from the Rocky Mountains -- may find George Bush's fuzzy science less amusing in the future."

Global Warming means more rain. Rain tends to come down on the tops of mountains. It may be true that GW, if it exists, will reduce the amount of snow, but it is unlikely to reduce the amount of rain available to the people of LA. Which means more water, but less favorably distributed around the whole year. That is what dams are for. How is this going to be a problem?

Posted by Don Williams | June 29, 2007 1:41 PM:"Plus, the Middle East will be hurt badly by the increase in heat from global warming. As has been widely noted, the USA is the main contributor to that effect. Any idea on how that will affect Al Qaeda's recruiting success?"

Badly I expect. Terrorists are usually well educated middle class people. People who are too busy searching for food are rarely free to murder Americans. And the US is not the main contributor any more. China is.

Posted by Batojar | June 29, 2007 1:44 PM:"The Ogallala Aquifer feeds the western mid-west with most of its irrigation water. It being emptied at a terrifying rate. If were possible to short real estate, you should short this area, it will be untenable in 50-75 years."

Riiight. I saw a guy crunch some number once. The costs of pumping all that water back up the Mississippi runs into the low billions. The value of the agricultural produce makes it economic to do so. The problem is that the aquifer is cheaper. Could you please explain to me why exactly the region is going to be untenable?

Posted by Don Williams | June 29, 2007 1:54 PM:"Australia is another marginal area being hit hard by global warming. It has been suffering a multi-year severe drought and some scientist have projected that Australia's situation will only get worse."

And yet it has been flooded recently.

http://abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/06/22/1958857.htm?site=illawarra

Not a sign of Australia being hit by anything unusual.

Posted by HeiGou | June 30, 2007 6:06 AM

Re "Not a sign of Australia being hit by anything unusual."
--------
That's because HeiGou has not looked. Google Australia and Drought and "import food"

See, for example, http://www.weatheronline.co.uk/feature/2007/04/20_b2.htm
An excerpt:
"SYDNEY, April 20, 2007 (AFP) - An unprecedented drought that has withered Australia's major food production zone could be a taste of things to come as global warming ramps up, experts said Friday. Prime Minister John Howard said the six-year drought was so extreme Australia may have to import food while fears are mounting that supermarket prices will skyrocket if no rains fall within the next few weeks. "The best thing that people could do is to pray for rain, and I mean that," Howard told public radio. The prime minister has refused to blame the "unprecedentedly dangerous" crisis directly on climate change.

But scientists said the link between climate change and the drying up of rivers in the vast Murray-Darling Basin, Australia's prime agricultural region, was strengthening. "You can't say that definitively, but I guess on the balance of evidence from southern Australia, rainfall patterns appear to have shifted," Adelaide University's professor of natural resources science Wayne Meyer said. "There's no question about the evidence in terms of increased temperature. We have seen this persistent increase in temperature over the last 30 or 50 years. All the projections are that that will continue." Meyer said Australia, with its warm climate, vast deserts and lack of mountains, would be one of the first countries in the world to be hit by the hardships caused by global warming. "We are the ones that are going to be at the forefront because we're less buffered," he told AFP.

On Thursday, Howard warned that farmers along the Murray-Darling region would lose all their irrigation water if rains do not fall by June. The Murray-Darling river system in southeastern Australia covers more than one million square kilometres (386,000 square miles), including most of New South Wales state and large parts of Victoria, Queensland and South Australia. Containing 72 percent of Australia's irrigated crops and pastures and much of the nation's grape crop, it is regarded as the country's food basket. Farmers say that unless drenching rains fall within weeks, the drought will devastate grape, citrus, stonefruit and apple production, cripple the wine industry and see food prices soar. "Well, we'll never prove it's climate change until after the event but a lot of farmers have said this drought has the fingerprints of climate change all over it," the government's Murray-Darling Basin Commission chief Wendy Craik said.

As the country debates further water restrictions for major cities, building desalination plants to provide fresh water, and even transplanting farms to the tropical north, the opposition has attacked the government for its previous climate change scepticism. "It's not the Howard government's fault in itself. I mean Mr. Howard can't make it rain, I understand that," Labor Party leader Kevin Rudd told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. "But for half a decade or more the government has been in a state of denial on climate change and water."

Posted by Don Williams | June 30, 2007 8:55 AM

Posted by Don Williams | June 30, 2007 8:55 AM :"That's because HeiGou has not looked. Google Australia and Drought and "import food""

Actually I have. You have to go back to April for that story. Look what has been happening *lately*:

http://www.weatheronline.co.uk/feature/2007/06/29_b1.htm

Australia: Floods - Friday, 29 Jun 2007
Australia: Floods
Floods follow drought

MELBOURNE, June 29, 2007 (AFP) - Residents of a previously drought-stricken area of southeastern Australian were Friday being evacuated to safety as rising floodwaters threatened to swamp homes and farmland. Scores of people have already been evacuated by army helicopters and police from homes in Gippsland in the east of Victoria state as officials warned that the deluge could worsen as rivers peak.

Jeff Amos, deputy mayor of the Wellington Shire Council, said it was ironic that residents who had recently battled savage bushfires and a long-standing drought had been confronted almost overnight with a flood emergency. "It was a fair deluge during the past week which has put an end to the drought in one way," Amos told AFP. "But unfortunately it's probably going to do more damage than good. "We've gone from drought to being completely under water." Many roads remain closed, scores of schools have been shut and hundreds of homes are without power while the dairy farming town of Newry has disappeared under water. "Everything gets swept away and everything's chaotic," Prime Minister John Howard told commercial radio as he pledged extra cash relief for those affected. Victorian state Premier Steve Bracks said he was concerned for the towns of Sale and Bairnsdale which appear to be in the path of the floodwaters as a king tide is expected later Friday. "There is an enormous body of water coming out of Lake Glenmaggie which is going over the spillway, that will come close to those towns," he said. "It's a big flood." "

The most famous Australian poem goes:

I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding rains.

Nothing has changed. It is still home of droughts and flooding rains.

Posted by HeiGou | June 30, 2007 9:04 AM

RE "Nothing has changed"
-------
The drought Australia has endured over the past 6 YEARS has been the worst in the past 100 YEARS. It's definitely not business as normal.

The rains in the past few weeks have brought some relief. Whether it's anything more than temporary relief is something to be seen.

Here is the statement re the rain from Australia's government:

"Statement on Drought for the 12-month period ending 31st May 2007
ISSUED 4th June 2007 by the National Climate Centre

Short Term Relief but Long Term Drought Persists
Autumn rainfall was average to above average over much of inland NSW, northern and western Victoria, Tasmania and southern South Australia, thereby providing some short-term relief to many agricultural systems and an easing of the severe drought caused in part by the 2006/07 El Niño event. However, some areas missed out, most notably eastern Queensland, southern Victoria (especially around Melbourne) and western WA.

An important consideration in the recovery from drought is the different rate at which systems respond to rainfall deficiencies. At the current time, many catchments in eastern Australia are excessively dry from a very protracted period of below average rainfall and above average temperatures. This means that it will take above average rainfall just to produce average runoff, and very considerable rainfall to make a material difference to water storages.

Long Term Deficiencies Remain in parts of western and eastern Australia
Average to above average rainfall during May in NSW, Victoria and Tasmania eased the intensity and extent of 12-month rainfall deficits in comparison with the situation at the end of April, but severe deficiencies still remain. In contrast, below average rainfall in WA saw little or no improvement in that State.

For the 12-month period from June 2006 to May 2007, there were serious to severe rainfall deficiencies over southern and eastern Australia in an arc extending across southeastern SA, much of southern and eastern Victoria, and the tablelands and western slopes in southeastern NSW. A large part of southeast Queensland was also affected, as were northern and eastern Tasmania and WA west of a line from Dampier in the north to Bremer Bay in the south. Record low 12-month falls were recorded between Dalby and Goondiwindi in southern Queensland, near much of WA’s west coast, in northeast Tasmania and in a large area around Melbourne.

The worst of the long-term deficiencies are likely to remain for some time. For them to be removed by the end of August, for example, falls over the next three months would need to be in the highest 10% of the historical record in many areas, especially in Victoria and southeast Queensland.

The deficiencies discussed above have occurred against a backdrop of multi-year rainfall deficits that have severely stressed water supplies in the east and southwest of the country. "
Ref: http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/drought/drought.shtml

Posted by Don Williams | June 30, 2007 9:22 AM

Posted by Don Williams | June 30, 2007 9:22 AM:"The drought Australia has endured over the past 6 YEARS has been the worst in the past 100 YEARS. It's definitely not business as normal."

Sorry but who says it is the worst drought for the past 100 years? However it does look to be business as usual:

http://www.uq.edu.au/news/?article=12354

Posted by Don Williams | June 30, 2007 9:22 AM:"The rains in the past few weeks have brought some relief. Whether it's anything more than temporary relief is something to be seen."

New South Wales has had the wettest June since 1964. That is not nothing.

The past drought is likely to have been caused by the El Nino effect. It seems to have shifted this year and so a cycle of wetter than average years is a reasonable expectation.

As I said, business as usual for Australia.

Posted by HeiGou | June 30, 2007 9:39 AM

Re HeiGou's comment "Sorry but who says it is the worst drought for the past 100 years?"
-----------
1) Well, YOUR own reference above refers to it.

2) Australia Prime Minister John Howard has noted the same. From the International Herald Tribune :

http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2006/10/13/asia/AS_GEN_Australia_Record_Drought.php
"SYDNEY, Australia Australia is in the grip of its worst drought in 100 years, Prime Minister John Howard said Friday, prompting concerns of a recession and possible irreversible climate change.

Australia, already one of the world's driest continents, has been suffering from below-average rainfall for the past several years.

Unseasonably hot, dry winds and early wildfires swept across four southern and eastern states this week, evaporating any hopes that a late spring rainfall might salvage Australia's failing crops.

"It's the worst in a century," Howard told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. on Friday. "I would expect this drought to leave a very big impression on the Australian psyche."
------------

3) The Authority you cited above, Dr Hamish McGowan , did not take issue with Howard's statement -- rather, McGowan noted that Australia has been even hotter if you look back over the past 5000 years.

4) Which is FINE -- provided Australia's 20 Million people are prepared to suffer a Rwanda like die-back, reduce its population via genocide, and go back to the living standards and population density of the aborigines circa 2000 BC.

Posted by Don Williams | June 30, 2007 10:43 AM

God, is there no prediction of dire environmental catastrophe that liberals will not swallow hook line and sinker? The U.N. is in the business of manufacturing problems - skepticism is warranted.

Posted by Homer | June 30, 2007 6:34 PM

Re: Australia

There are models which suggest that GW will shift Indian Ocean moisture from its eastern end to its western-- more rain for Africa and Arabia (perhaps shrinking deserts there) while Australia and Indonesia gets less and India pretty much breaks even.

Posted by JonF | July 1, 2007 9:04 AM