Re: SC44

http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0621/p10s01-wogi.html

Global warming may uproot millions

GLOBAL WARMING IS likely to uproot millions of people, forcing them to leave their homes and in the process create large-scale political, economic, and military challenges.
In fact, say a growing number of experts, it's already beginning to happen.
"Human-induced climate and hydrologic change is likely to make many parts of the world uninhabitable, or at least uneconomic," writes Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University in New York, in the current online issue of Scientific American. As a result, he says, "Over the course of a few decades, if not sooner, hundreds of millions of people may be compelled to relocate because of environmental pressures."
Rising sea levels, stronger cyclones, the loss of soil moisture, more intense precipitation and flooding, droughts, melting glaciers, and changing snow-melt patterns are among the problems humanity will face, says Dr. Sachs. He warns:
"Combined with the human-induced depletion of groundwater sources by pumping, and the extensive pollution of rivers and lakes, mass migrations may be unavoidable."
The Christian Aid agency predicts that by 2050 global warming could displace as many as 1 billion people.
"All around the world, predictable patterns are going to result in very long-term and very immediate changes in the ability of people to earn their livelihoods," Michele Klein Solomon of the International Organization of Migration told Reuters. "It's pretty overwhelming to see what we might be facing in the next 50 years. And it's starting now."
Forced migration linked to climate change is part of a larger problem: refugees due to floods, famine, and other environmental conditions. In 2002, the United Nations estimated that there were about 24 million environmental refugees.
By 2010, about 50 million people will have migrated for environmental reasons, according to a 2005 study by Norman Myers, a professor of environmental science at Duke University in Durham, N.C., the Associated Press reported recently.....