

UN: There will be 50 million climate refugees by 2010 (oops, 2020) - yummyfajitas
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/04/15/the-un-disappears-50-million-climate-refugees-then-botches-the-disappearing-attempt/

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edw
Without dismissing climate change as a serious potential problem, I have a
couple of points:

1\. Bill Gates once remarked that when projecting five years out, we tend to
over-estimate the amount of progress you expect to see, but we wind up wildly
underestimating the amount of change you see over a ten year period.
Exponential growth looks flat before it looks linear before you get to the
hockey stick. (And being start-up people, we know those hockey sticks always
materialize…)

2\. This sort of crap the U.N. pulls—see also the UK's reports suggesting we
abandon backhoes and go back to employing humans to dig ditches—is based on
political or quasi-religious beliefs and not practical economic analysis.
Maybe there will be fifty million climate refuges, but then maybe most of
those people will move to a city where they contribute to their societies'
wealth far more than they would have wherever they were displaced from. The
word "refugee" may have some sort of value-neutral definition, but in this
case it's clearly suggesting that people are worse-off for being displaced.
That is not necessarily the case. (Yes, I'm a Bjorn Lomborg fan.)

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jellicle
Large parts of the provinces of Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba are
underwater, as they have been every year for the past several years:

[http://edmonton.ctv.ca/servlet/an/local/CTVNews/20110417/man...](http://edmonton.ctv.ca/servlet/an/local/CTVNews/20110417/manitoba-
flooding-110417/20110417/?hub=EdmontonHome)

The reason being that global warming is causing increased snowfall and
therefore increased runoff each spring.

But since yummyfajitas doesn't read about this on his climate-change denial
website, it doesn't exist.

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bobsnotmyuncle
This is a really scummy climate change denial website.

One great example is their coverage of ClimateGate, which is all about the
negative:

<http://wattsupwiththat.com/climategate/>

But completely avoids mentioning that all investigates cleared the original
subjects and found no wrong doing:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_email_co...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_email_controversy)

~~~
yummyfajitas
So what? Original sources are provided, so the provenance of the author is
irrelevant.

Here is the google cache of the article:
[http://maps.grida.no/go/graphic/fifty-million-climate-
refuge...](http://maps.grida.no/go/graphic/fifty-million-climate-refugees-
by-2010)

Here is the image (which has not yet been taken down):
<http://maps.grida.no/library/files/storage/11kap9climat.png>

Here is a mirror of the image, just in case they do take it down:
<http://imgur.com/l7LQv>

As for the "investigates" which "cleared" the original subjects, they are
merely political whitewashes which narrowly define "wrong doing" in such a way
as to make sure the CRU actions don't meet that definition. I explain why in
this thread:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1493976>

The fact that the CRU folks conspired to hide data is not in doubt.

Apart from lowering the status of the author of the article, what value do you
believe your post adds?

