Posted on 06/15/2004 1:47:08 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
UNITED NATIONS (AP) The world is turning to dust, with lands the size of Rhode Island becoming desert wasteland every year and the problem threatening to send millions of people fleeing to greener countries, the United Nations says.
One-third of the Earth's surface is at risk, driving people into cities and destroying agriculture in vast swaths of Africa. Thirty-one percent of Spain is threatened, while China has lost 36,000 square miles to desert an area the size of Indiana since the 1950s.
This week the United Nations marks the 10th anniversary of the Convention to Combat Desertification, a plan aimed at stopping the phenomenon. Despite the efforts, the trend seems to be picking up speed doubling its pace since the 1970s.
``It's a creeping catastrophe,'' said Michel Smitall, a spokesman for the U.N. secretariat that oversees the 1994 accord. ``Entire parts of the world might become uninhabitable.''
Slash-and-burn agriculture, sloppy conservation, overtaxed water supplies and soaring populations are mostly to blame. But global warming is taking its toll, too.
The United Nations is holding a ceremony in Bonn, Germany, on Thursday to mark World Day to Combat Desertification, and will hold a meeting in Brazil this month to take stock of the problem.
The warning comes as a controversial movie, ``The Day After Tomorrow'' is whipping up interest in climate change, and as rivers and lakes dry up in the American West, giving Americans a taste of what's to come elsewhere.
The United Nations says:
From the mid-1990s to 2000, 1,374 square miles have turned into deserts each year an area about the size of Rhode Island. That's up from 840 square miles in the 1980s, and 624 square miles during the 1970s.
By 2025, two-thirds of arable land in Africa will disappear, along with one-third of Asia's and one-fifth of South America's.
Some 135 million people equivalent to the populations of France and Germany combined are at risk of being displaced.
Most at risk are dry regions on the edges of deserts places like sub-Saharan Africa or the Gobi Desert in China, where people are already struggling to eke out a living from the land.
As populations expand, those regions have become more stressed. Trees are cut for firewood, grasslands are overgrazed, fields are over-farmed and lose their nutrients, water becomes scarcer and dirtier.
Technology can make the problem worse. In parts of Australia, irrigation systems are pumping up salty water and slowly poisoning farms. In Saudi Arabia, herdsmen can use water trucks instead of taking their animals from oasis to oasis but by staying in one place, the herds are getting bigger and eating all the grass.
In Spain, Portugal, Italy and Greece, coastal resorts are swallowing up water that once moistened the wilderness. Many farmers in those countries still flood their fields instead of using more miserly ``drip irrigation,'' and the resulting shortages are slowly baking the life out of the land.
The result is a patchy ``rash'' of dead areas, rather than an easy-to-see expansion of existing deserts, scientists say. These areas have their good times and bad times as the weather changes. But in general, they are getting bigger and worse-off.
``It's not as dramatic as a flood or a big disaster like an earthquake,'' said Richard Thomas of the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas in Aleppo, Syria. ``There are some bright spots and hot spots. But overall, there is a trend toward increasing degradation.''
The trend is speeding up, but it has been going on for centuries, scientists say. Fossilized pollen and seeds, along with ancient tools like grinding stones, show that much of the Middle East, the Mediterranean and North Africa were once green. The Sahara itself was a savanna, and rock paintings show giraffes, elephants and cows once lived there.
Global warming contributes to the problem, making many dry areas drier, scientists say. In the last century, average temperatures have risen over 1 degree Fahrenheit worldwide, according to the U.S. Global Change Research Program.
As for the American Southwest, it is too early to tell whether its six-year drought could turn to something more permanent. But scientists note that reservoir levels are dropping as cities like Phoenix and Las Vegas expand.
``In some respects you may have greener vegetation showing up in people's yards, but you may be using water that was destined for the natural environment,'' said Stuart Marsh of the University of Arizona's Office of Arid Lands Studies. ``That might have an effect on the biodiversity surrounding that city.''
The Global Change Research Program says global warming could eventually make the Southwest wetter but it will also cause more extreme weather, meaning harsher droughts that could kill vegetation. Now, the Southwest drought has become so severe that even the sagebrush is dying.
``The lack of water and the overuse of water, that is going to be a threat to the United States,'' Thomas said. ``In other parts of the world, the problem is poverty that causes people to overuse the land. Most of these ecological systems have tipping points, and once you go past them, things go downhill.''
On the Web:
United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification: http://www.unccd.int
International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas : http://www.icarda.org/
University of Arizona Office of Arid Lands Studies: http://ag.arizona.edu/OALS/oals/oals.html
So, this process probably started well before humans made any significant impact on the environment.
Weren't most modern day deserts forests in the past? But maybe I'm remembering my earth science of 30 years ago incorrectly.
LOL!Good one.
That points out a problem with the Bering land bridge that people supposedly walked across last Ice Age. It was a thousand miles of desert. A major expedition might make it across, but a hunting party would not be interested.
That's exactly what the Brits did with the 18th Century(?)Enclosures Act, which solved the problem of overgrazing on common land ("The Tragedy of the Commons").
Lets see. The earth has 57,308,738 square miles of land mass. Say 10 million of that is already desert, so over 47 million habitable. At a rate of 1,374 miles a year turning into desert, in 34,000 years we're looking at a disaster starring a very very old Dennis Quaid in, "The Day After Tomorrow...34,000 Years From Now!"
The UN could always start a "sand for food" program.
Oh, brother! And how much will it cost our grandchildren if this U.N. announced crisis du jour turns out to be nothing more than a red herring to distract folks from the U.N. "Oil-For-Food" scandal, and money that might have been spent on medicinal research, technology, the arts and science -- things that would have raised the quality of our grandchildren's lives -- instead vanished,once again,down the bureaucratic rat hole?
The Sahara was green and inhabited during the Ice Age. It rained, there were rivers and lakes. It rained in Egypt so much they didn't rely on the Nile or its flooding.
Amen! Like the saying goes: "When everybody owns everything*, nobody takes care of anything."
(*a la socialism/communism)
At the Ice Age max, wasn't N Europe iced over?
That's great, it starts with an earthquake, birds and snakes, an aeroplane - Lenny Bruce is not afraid. Eye of a hurricane, listen to yourself churn - world serves its own needs, don't misserve your own needs. Feed it up a knock, speed, grunt no, strength no. Ladder structure clatter with fear of height, down height. Wire in a fire, represent the seven games in a government for hire and a combat site. Left her, wasn't coming in a hurry with the furies breathing down your neck. Team by team reporters baffled, trump, tethered crop. Look at that low plane! Fine then. Uh oh, overflow, population, common group, but it'll do. Save yourself, serve yourself. World serves its own needs, listen to your heart bleed. Tell me with the rapture and the reverent in the right - right. You vitriolic, patriotic, slam, fight, bright light, feeling pretty psyched.
It's the end of the world as we know it.
It's the end of the world as we know it.
It's the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine.
Six o'clock - TV hour. Don't get caught in foreign tower. Slash and burn, return, listen to yourself churn. Lock him in uniform and book burning, blood letting. Every motive escalate. Automotive incinerate. Light a candle, light a motive. Step down, step down. Watch a heel crush, crush. Uh oh, this means no fear - cavalier. Renegade and steer clear! A tournament, a tournament, a tournament of lies. Offer me solutions, offer me alternatives and I decline.
It's the end of the world as we know it.
It's the end of the world as we know it.
It's the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine.
The other night I tripped a nice continental drift divide. Mount St. Edelite. Leonard Bernstein. Leonid Breshnev, Lenny Bruce and Lester Bangs. Birthday party, cheesecake, jelly bean, boom! You symbiotic, patriotic, slam, but neck, right? Right.
It's the end of the world as we know it.
It's the end of the world as we know it.
It's the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine...fine...
(It's time I had some time alone)
Nah, I'd rather see them turned into salt. ;-)
WHAT?????
Party time!!
=========================
LOL!! Kegger at FC's place!
The UN should rename itself "The Tower of Dome."
They could wear black robes and read chicken entrails every day for a year and issue disaster warnings. Then to rescue them we'll send in 10 tank battalions to blow up the tower. We can film it and call it "The Day After the Day After Tomorrow." or "Repitition Breeds Insanity, Over and Over."
Big Spring, Texas
I don't live near there-- thank goodness.
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