Geostrategic Media Political Commentary, Analysis, Security, Defense
Arshad Khan
f one thinks Putin has become a headache, then the future of Europe under the forecast climate change regime is pneumonia.
According to this scenario, ice melt from Greenland and the Arctic will raise sea levels around Florida. Aside from greater and wider coastal flooding, this change will inhibit the regular Gulf Stream Drift that makes its way across the Atlantic warming northern Europe and ensuring the English climate is even milder. Part of it of course is due to Britain being an island and so enjoying the moderating effects of the sea — again more so because of the Gulf Stream.
This relatively even weather in England has undergone change. More frequent 90F and higher days in summer, once relatively rare, is one symptom — the UK just recorded its highest ever temperature of 104.54F. There have also been heavy rains and flooding notably in December 2020 when a wide belt across the south suffered catastrophic inundation of historic proportions.
Scientists and the UN confirm an increase in the frequency of natural disasters. This includes forest fires, hurricanes or typhoons, excessive rains and floods.
July 14 might be celebrated as Bastille Day and a national holiday in France but in neighboring Belgium it now commemorates the devastating floods in 2021. Heavy rains and the Meuse river overflowing its banks turned streets into canals in the eastern city of Liege. The floods extended to the Netherlands and western Germany, caused by a low pressure system that stalled for two days over the region. Rain falling on soil already soaked by spring rains and overflowing rivers (the Meuse in Belgium and Netherlands, the Rhine and the Ruhr in Germany) devastated the area. At least 243 people lost their lives and property damage was estimated at $12 billion.
If last year was one of floods, this year it’s drought and dry heat and forest fires — temperatures hitting 117 F in Portugal and an estimated 75,000 acres lost to forest fires; also dry as tinder Italy where the river Po, the country’s longest river, has been reduced to a trickle.
England has been subject to a similar pattern, suffering some of the worst flooding in its history last year and now reeling from forest fires. “I’ve fought wildfires for decades. None of it prepared me for the infernos this week,” screams a Guardian (July 22, 2022) headline quoting a firefighter. London fire fighters have just had the busiest day since the Second World War.
When will governments understand that the earth is changing, that natural disasters piling one on top of the other, and that forest fires in Europe, in Australia, in the US and elsewhere plus floods and typhoons etc., are not coincidences?
One hopes it is soon, and we humans learn to moderate damaging behaviors.
