Adaptation to global warming Totally Explained

Everything about Adaptation To Global Warming totally explained

Adaptation to global warming consists of initiatives and measures to reduce the vulnerability of natural and human systems against actual or expected climate change effects. This is in distinction to the mitigation of global warming. According to the former Chief Scientific Adviser to the UK Government David King, it's very likely that adaptation to global warming is inevitable as "it is unlikely that levels of greenhouse gases can be kept low enough to avoid a projected temperature rise of 2 °C".

Effects of global warming

The predicted effects for the environment and for human life are numerous and varied. The main effect is an increasing global average temperature. From this flow a variety of resulting claims, namely, rising sea levels, altered patterns of agriculture, increased extreme weather and extreme weather events, the expansion of the range of tropical diseases, the opening of new trade routes.
Specific anticipated effects include sea level rise of between 1990 and 2100, repercussions to agriculture, possible slowing of the thermohaline circulation, reductions in the ozone layer, increased intensity and frequency of extreme weather events, lowering of ocean pH, and the spread of diseases such as malaria and dengue fever.
A summary of probable effects and recent understanding can be found in the report made for the IPCC Third Assessment Report by Working Group II. The more recent contribution of Working Group II detailing the impacts of global warming for the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report has been summarized for policymakers.

Necessity for adaptation

National Academy of Sciences

One prominent attempt to broach adaptation was a 1991 report by the American National Academy of Sciences, "Policy Implications of Greenhouse Warming." The National Academy report cautioned that agricultural adaptation will be essential in a greenhouse world.

IPCC Working Group II

IPCC Working Group II argues that mitigation and adaptation should be complementary components of a response strategy to global warming. Their report makes the following observations:

Adaptation is a necessary strategy at all scales to complement climate change mitigation efforts.
Those with the least resources have the least capacity to adapt and are the most vulnerable
Adaptation, sustainable development, and enhancement of equity can be mutually reinforcing.

Adaptation is a necessary strategy

Because of the current and projected climate disruption precipitated by high levels of greenhouse gas emissions by the industrialized nations, adaptation is a necessary strategy at all scales to complement climate change mitigation efforts because we can't be sure that all climate change can be mitigated. And indeed the odds are quite high that in the long run more warming is inevitable, given the geologic evidence of the past's most similar glacial / interglacial cycle which happened about 400,000 years ago. That similarity being determined by degree of the elliptic shape of the earth's orbit and how close the Sun is when the most land, that's the northern hemisphere, is being warmed by it.
Adaptation has the potential to reduce adverse impacts of climate change and to enhance beneficial impacts, but will incur costs and won't prevent all damages. Extremes, variability, and rates of change are all key features in addressing vulnerability and adaptation to climate change, not simply changes in average climate conditions.
Human and natural systems will to some degree adapt autonomously to climate change. Planned adaptation can supplement autonomous adaptation, though there are more options and greater possibility for offering incentives in the case of adaptation of human systems than in the case of adaptation to protect natural systems.

Disadvantaged nations

The ability of human systems to adapt to and cope with climate change generally depends on such factors as wealth, technology, education, information, skills, infrastructure, access to resources, management capabilities, and sociopolitical will. There is potential for more advantaged and less advantaged countries to enhance and/or acquire adaptive capabilities. Populations and communities are highly variable in their endowments with these attributes, and disadvantaged countries are weakest in this regard. As a result, they've lesser capacity to adapt and are more vulnerable to climate change damages, just as they're more vulnerable to other stresses. This condition is most extreme among the most disadvantaged people.

Mutual reinforcement

Many communities and regions that are vulnerable to climate change are also under pressure from forces such as population growth, resource depletion, and poverty. Policies that lessen pressures on resources, improve management of environmental risks, and increase the welfare of the poorest members of society can simultaneously advance sustainable development and equity, enhance adaptive capacity, and reduce vulnerability to climate and other stresses. Inclusion of climatic risks in the design and implementation of national and international development initiatives such as polar cities can promote equity and development that's more sustainable and that reduces vulnerability to climate change.

National Center for Policy Analysis

A study by the American National Center for Policy Analysis argues that adaptation is more cost-effective than mitigation. Their report makes the following observations:

By 2085, the contribution of (unmitigated) warming to the above listed problems is generally smaller than other factors unrelated to climate change.

More important, these risks would be lowered much more effectively and economically by reducing current and future vulnerability to climate change rather than through its mitigation.

Finally, adaptation would help developing countries cope with major problems now, and through 2085 and beyond, whereas generations would pass before anything less than draconian mitigation would have a discernible effect.

The Kyoto Protocol

Under the Kyoto Protocol, the United States would have agreed to cut greenhouse emissions by about 400 million tons per year by 2012. In 2003 the world net output of anthropogenic carbon dioxide, the chief greenhouse gas, was about 25 billion metric tons annually.
Even with the Kyoto Protocol, global emissions by 2015 will rise to perhaps 9 billion tons, 50 percent higher than today's level. Such nearly-inevitable carbon buildup ought to tell us is that if greenhouse theory is right, a warming world is now unavoidable: at least through the next generation, until a renewable-fuels energy economy can be created.

Criteria for assessing responses

James Titus identifies the following criteria that policy makers should use in assessing responses to global warming:

Economic Efficiency: Will the initiative yield benefits substantially greater than if the resources were applied elsewhere?

Flexibility: Is the strategy reasonable for the entire range of possible changes in temperatures, precipitation, and sea level?

Urgency: Would the strategy be successful if implementation were delayed ten or twenty years?

Low Cost: Does the strategy require minimal resources?

Equity: Does the strategy unfairly benefit some at the expense of other regions, generations, or economic classes?

Institutional feasibility: Is the strategy acceptable to the public? Can it be implemented with existing institutions under existing laws?

Unique or Critical Resources: Would the strategy decrease the risk of losing unique environmental or cultural resources?

Health and Safety: Would the proposed strategy increase or decrease the risk of disease or injury?

Consistency: Does the policy support other national state, community, or private goals?

Private v. Public Sector: Does the strategy minimize governmental interference with decisions best made by the private sector?

Adaptation mechanisms

Scheraga and Grambsch identify 9 fundamental principles to be considered when designing adaptation policy.

The effects of climate change vary by region.

The effects of climate change may vary across demographic groups.

Climate change poses both risks and opportunities.

The effects of climate change must be considered in the context of multiple stressors and factors, which may be as important to the design of adaptive responses as the sensitivity of the change.

Adaptation comes at a cost.

Adaptive responses vary in effectiveness, as demonstrated by current efforts to cope with climate variability.

The systemic nature of climate impacts complicates the development of adaptation policy.

Maladaptation can result in negative effects that are as serious as the climate-induced effects that are being avoided.

Many opportunities for adaptation make sense whether or not the effects of climate change are realized.

Methods of adaptation

Examples of adaptation include defending against rising sea levels through better flood defences, and changing patterns of land use like avoiding more vulnerable areas for housing.

Agricultural production

A significant effect of global climate change, especially global rainfall patterns may be upon agriculture. Extended drought can cause the failure of small and marginal farms with resultant economic, political and social disruption.
However, such events have previously occurred in human history independent of global climate change. In recent decades, global trade has created distribution networks capable of delivering surplus food to where it's needed, thus reducing local impact.

Weather control

Russian and American scientists have in the past tried to control the weather, for example by seeding clouds with chemicals to try to produce rain when and where it's needed. A new method being developed involves replicating the urban heat island effect, where cities are slightly hotter than the countryside because they're darker and absorb more heat. This creates 28% more rain 20-40 miles downwind from cities compared to upwind. On the timescale of several decades, new weather control techniques may become feasible which would allow control of extreme weather such as hurricanes.

Damming glacial lakes

Glacial Lake Outburst Floods may become a bigger concern due to the retreat of glaciers, leaving behind numerous lakes that are impounded by often weak terminal moraine dams. In the past, the sudden failure of these dams has resulted in localized property damage, injury and deaths. Glacial lakes in danger of bursting can have their moraines replaced with concrete dams (which may also provide hydroelectric power).

Assisting disadvantaged nations

In 2000, there was a proposal made at the Sixth Conference of Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change that called for the creation of an Adaptation Fund of $1 billion per year for developing countries, especially the least developed and small island states, to enable them to combat the consequences of climate change.

Further Information

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