Climate Change Events or Acts of God?

Epic flooding in the Philippines’ capital, Manila, came after a tropical storm and typhoon dumped a month’s worth of rain in just 12 hours, leaving some 500,000 Filipinos homeless and at least 240 people dead. Vietnam was also hit, while Samoa, Tonga and Indonesia suffered badly from the impact of earthquakes and tsunamis.

Associated Press report in Asian Journal (1 October 2009):

As the Philippines appealed to the international community for aid in the wake of floods due to typhoon Ondoy, activists remind global leaders that this calamity is an example of the dangers of climate change.

“The Philippine floods should remind politicians and delegates negotiating the climate treaty that they are not just talking about paragraphs, amendments and dollars,”  Kim Carstensen, leader of the World Wildlife Fund Global Climate Initiative said.

“But (it is) about the lives of millions of people and the future of this planet,” Cartensen added in an Associated Press report.

“This has to be a wake up call for the world as it prepares for the climate change talks later in the year,” World Vision Philippines Emergency Affairs Director Jose Bersales, meanwhile, said in a recent Inquirer report.

World leaders are set to meet in Copenhagen, Denmark in December to try to hammer out a new global treaty to address climate change. Delegations from 192 countries will hold two weeks of talks at the summit, which is the end of an earlier two-year global treaty on climate.

Last Tuesday September 22, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon convened a high-level climate summit to caution world leaders to put aside differences and move quickly in combating global warming.

President Barack Obama, during the summit, said the US is a serious partner in combating global warming, telling peers “We understand the gravity of the climate threat. We are determined to act.”

The US president is under pressure to put political weight behind getting, among others, a serious clean-energy law in the country.

Environmental experts had said that burning fossil fuels like coal, oil and gas contributes largely to climate change.

This produces carbon dioxide, which in addition to that which is present naturally in our planet’s atmosphere, acts as a kind of blanket, trapping more of the sun’s energy and warming the Earth’s surface

Although the initial impact is a rise in average temperatures around the world this also produces rising sea levels and changes in rainfall patterns.

The epic flooding in the Philippines’ capital, Manila, came after the tropical storm Ondoy (international codename Ketsana) dumped a month’s worth of rain in just 12 hours last Saturday, September 26.

Some 500,000 Filipinos in Metro Manila were displaced due to the floods, at least 240 people died, while 34 are missing. The death toll is expected to increase as rescuers make way into areas previously blocked off by debris. Health officials, meanwhile, have warned of an outbreak of diseases.

Overwhelmed government officials called for international help, saying they might not have enough resources for its rescue operations.

The flood, which is the worst in almost 40 years, is said to be an effect of climate change. Just last year, a US-based Filipino physicist had warned that the Philippines is very vulnerable to climate change.

“The Philippines is not emitting carbon dioxide but it’s going to be the biggest victim of climate change,” Dr. Josefino Comiso told a briefing organized by the Department of Science and Technology (DOST) in Manila last year.

Comiso, a senior scientist at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) said the country is very vulnerable to a warming climate because it’s home to a high diversity of species.

He also echoed observations by climate experts that the Philippines was vulnerable to a rise in sea level and stronger storms as an offshoot of global warming.

“We’ve been having longer and heavier rainfall in the previous years. That may be associated with global warming,” he said in an interview with the Inquirer. “If you have a warmer ocean, you get more evaporation. You also get stronger typhoons in the process,” he added.

Comiso, who has made several studies on climate change, visited Manila last year to share his knowledge with the academe under the Balik-Scientist Program of the DOST.

Source: www.asianjournal.com