'Climate change: adapt to it, don't fight it'

The Telegraph 26 Mar 08;

The world would be better off adapting to the consequences of climate change rather than trying to fight the causes, according to scientists.

They accept the scientific consensus on global warming but differ about what needs to be done about it.

The group, including Mike Hulme, the founding director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of East Anglia, also believe that climate change may not necessarily be as catastrophic for the planet as has been forecast.

Their controversial view, which they accept will lead to them being branded as "the new pariahs of global warming", is that the world would be better off fighting the consequences of climate change - hunger, storm damage and disease - rather than spending billions of pounds trying to stabilise CO2 emissions across the planet.

Roger Pielke Jr, an environmental policy expert at the University of Colorado at Boulder, told the journal Natural Hazards Review: "Everything has been put on the back of carbon dioxide, and carbon dioxide cannot carry that weight."

He went on: "I've been accused of taking money from Exxon or being a right-wing hack. I would characterise us as realists. Realists on what is politically possible."

Daniel Sarewitz, a public policy expert at the Arizona State University, told the Los Angeles Times this view represented the "radical middle".

The United Nations estimates that global warming would increase the number of people at risk of hunger from 777m in 2020 to 885m by 2080, a 14 per cent rise, if current development patterns continue.

But Prof Hulme said that increase could be tackled by funding better irrigation systems, drought-resistant crops and more-efficient food transport systems, rather than fighting global warming.

"If you're really concerned about drought, those are much more effective strategies than trying to bring down greenhouse gas concentrations," he said.

And on malaria - which could be carried by mosquitos into Africa's highland regions with higher temperatures - Paul Reiter, an expert on mosquito-borne disease at the Pasteur Institute in Paris told the newspaper: "We should be more concerned with controlling the disease than trying to change the weather."

He recommended heavier use of pesticides to kill mosquitoes - the same strategy that eradicated malaria in the United States and elsewhere.

Hans von Storch, director of the Institute of Coastal Research in Germany, added that the problems were already so big that the burdens caused by rising temperatures would be relatively small. It would be like driving at 160 kilometres per hour when "going 150... is already dangerous," he said.

But many scientists believe downplaying the importance of emissions reductions is dangerous. Stephen Schneider, a climatologist at Stanford University, said: "You can't adapt to melting the Greenland ice sheet. You can't adapt to species that have gone extinct."

Other scientists said that if adaptation were so simple, it would have already been done. Professor Sir Andrew Haines, director of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said: "I agree we need better strategies to combat malaria and increasing resources are being devoted to this end.

"However, malaria is only one of a number of health outcomes that are likely to be affected by climate change.

"There are also major health co-benefits from policies to promote more equitable access to clean energy, for example by reducing exposure to indoor and outdoor air pollution and by promoting active transport policies."