Jay Gulledge, un des directeurs des \u00e9tudes sur la question du changement climatique au PEW Center on Global Climate Change, estime que l’ann\u00e9e 2010 marque peut-\u00eatre une \u00e9volution importante sinon d\u00e9cisive de l’appr\u00e9ciation politique g\u00e9n\u00e9rale sur la question de la crise climatique. (Voir le 17 ao\u00fbt 2010<\/a>, sur PRW Climate.org<\/em>.) Les \u00e9v\u00e9nements climatiques ont d\u00e9j\u00e0 \u00e9t\u00e9 extr\u00eames durant ces huit derniers mois (il en rappelle un certain nombre) et ils se concentrent aujourd’hui sur les deux catastrophes qu’on pourrait juger comme g\u00e9ographiquement contig\u00fces et climatologiquement li\u00e9es : les incendies en Russie et les inondations au Pakistan.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00abOne might think that too much rain in Pakistan would have nothing to do with too little rain in Russia, but two expert analyses by CNN meteorologist Brandon Miller and Weather Underground meteorologist Dr. Jeff Masters find that the two are connected. The Russian heat wave is associated with an intense dome of high atmospheric pressure that has settled in over Eastern Europe. This dome is so immovable that it is blocking the flow of the jet stream, which typically determines where mid-latitude storms drop their rains. A similar blocking high was in place over Western Europe during the extremely deadly 2003 European heat wave. The block over Russia forced the jet stream to dive far southward, carrying with it a great deal of moisture that normally would have watered Russia’s substantial wheat crop. Instead, that rain fell in northern Pakistan, combining with the already abundant rainfall normally associated with the Asian Monsoon this time of year. The combination of the two was just too much, so while Russia’s crops withered and burned, Pakistan’s crops drowned.<\/em> <\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00bbReturning to the question everyone wants answered: What can we say about the connection between these events and climate change? As usual, there is no definitive answer about these specific events, but direct observations show that extreme weather events have become more frequent in the past half-century, and in the extreme cases that have been studied, the mechanisms are those that one would expect from global warming. At the most basic level, more droughts and heat waves are expected because of hotter, longer-lasting high pressure systems that dry out the land, as witnessed in Russia. On the other hand, more floods are expected because hotter air evaporates more water from the surface and holds more moisture. When the conditions are right, that moisture is released, creating a deluge, as witnessed in Pakistan. The same basic phenomenon was behind the unusually heavy snowstorms that hit the U.S. East Coast this winter<\/em> []<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00bbSo it is reasonable to conclude that, in aggregate, the documented increase in extreme events is partially a climate response to global warming, and that global warming has increased the risk of extreme events like those in Russia and Pakistan. On the other hand, there is no scientific basis for arguing that these events have nothing to do with global warming.<\/em>\u00bb<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \tJay Gulledge aborde alors la question de savoir si l’on peut encore soutenir la position interm\u00e9diaire, ou opportuniste, dans le d\u00e9bat sur la crise climatique, qui est l’affirmation qu’il y a des gagnants et des perdants dans la crise climatique. Cette id\u00e9e a \u00e9t\u00e9 surtout d\u00e9velopp\u00e9e pour la Russie qui, \u00e0 c\u00f4t\u00e9 d’un r\u00e9el scepticisme pour la crise climatique, a d\u00e9velopp\u00e9 l’id\u00e9e qu’elle pourrait \u00eatre gagnante si cette crise climatique se d\u00e9veloppe effectivement. Jay Gulledge revient sur une d\u00e9claration de Medvedev du 30 juillet 2010, qui a d\u00e9j\u00e0 \u00e9t\u00e9 comment\u00e9e de diverses sources (voir le Center of National Amercan Security, le 5 ao\u00fbt 2010<\/a>), et qui semblerait marquer un changement important de l’appr\u00e9ciation russe de la crise climatique, vers l’appr\u00e9ciation d’une crise r\u00e9elle et fondamentale.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00abEconomists and security analysts frequently argue that Russia is likely to be a climate change winner, since warmer temperatures could reduce heating fuel consumption, lengthen the agricultural growing season, and open up transportation routes and access to mineral and energy deposits in the Arctic. But these types of analyses inevitably focus on a few simplistic variables, while neglecting a plethora of more complex and likely negative impacts. It seems clear that Russia will not benefit from warm weather this year, and if this type of event were to become common in future decades, it is hard to see Russia being a climate-change winner, even if it is rich on oil and gas money. Moreover, Russia is fighting an ongoing extremist insurgency at home that has ties with both Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Does Russia win if the Taliban and other hard-line extremists step in to fill the void left by an ineffectual government and international aid response to the floods in Pakistan?<\/em> <\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00bbIt’s time to put to rest the overly simplistic notion that there will be clear winners and losers in a warmer world. I had the privilege of working with top-flight national security experts on a report published by the Center for a New American Security and the Center for Strategic and International Studies in 2007, called The Age of Consequences: The Foreign Policy and National Security Implications of Climate Change. In the executive summary, we wrote:<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00bbA few countries may benefit from climate change in the short term, but there will be no winners.’ Any location on Earth is potentially vulnerable to the cascading and reinforcing negative effects of global climate change. While growing seasons might lengthen in some areas, or frozen seaways might open to new maritime traffic in others, the negative offsetting consequencessuch as a collapse of ocean systems and their fisheriescould easily negate any perceived local or national advantages. Unchecked global climate change will disrupt a dynamic ecological equilibrium in ways that are difficult to predict. The new ecosystem is likely to be unstable and in continual flux for decades or longer. Today’s winner’ could be tomorrow’s big-time loser.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00bbRemarkably, Russian President Medvedev seems to get the point. Speaking to an international gathering, in front of TV cameras, the president was forthright: Practically everything is burning. The weather is anomalously hot. What’s happening with the planet’s climate right now needs to be a wake-up call to all of us, meaning all heads of state, all heads of social organizations, in order to take a more energetic approach to countering the global changes to the climate.<\/em>\u00bb<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \n dedefensa.org<\/em><\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 2010 et la crise climatique Jay Gulledge, un des directeurs des \u00e9tudes sur la question du changement climatique au PEW Center on Global Climate Change, estime que l’ann\u00e9e 2010 marque peut-\u00eatre une \u00e9volution importante sinon d\u00e9cisive de l’appr\u00e9ciation politique g\u00e9n\u00e9rale sur la question de la crise climatique. (Voir le 17 ao\u00fbt 2010, sur PRW Climate.org.)… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[3392,3228,9949,6508,9950,2858,3379,5501,2730],"class_list":["post-72199","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ouverture-libre","tag-climatique","tag-crise","tag-gagnants","tag-incendie","tag-inondations","tag-medvedev","tag-pakistan","tag-pew","tag-russie"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72199","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72199"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72199\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72199"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72199"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72199"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}