While governments argue over responsibility for global warming, development experts are thinking about the humanitarian consequences for the world’s poor. See the climate challenges China faces, from China Dialogue:
…China faces additional problems in data collection because of high levels of urban pollution, which makes its cities unnaturally hot. Ren showed slides of meteorological stations in Xining, Shijiazhuang, Beijing and Bailingmiao, Inner Mongolia. All of the stations were surrounded by buildings. Some were obscured by a filmy grey haze. “When the Xining station relocated to suburbs,” he explained, “we saw a big drop in temperature.”
Indeed, the lack of reliable data from the developing world frustrates the IPCC’s work. As the journal Nature pointed out in commentary on the committee’s April impacts report, 28,115 of the document’s 28,671 observations of biological systems came from Europe. Only two were taken in Africa – particularly alarming because the region is experiencing the effects of climate change so acutely. [Full Text]
