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… with a good Jeopardy answer, plus a minor footnote
Nature’s Edge Notebook: Durban Diary
“Slow Onset Disaster” is a phrase that’s been used for decades by specialists in the United Nations system who help people prepare for and deal with … slow onset disasters.
For example, drought.
There is often enough warning time for groups like the U.N.’s ISDR office (for International Strategy for Disaster Reduction) to prepare people to lessen the suffering, financial loss and natural destruction that can be reasonably predicted as the ancient and familiar patterns of drought begin to set in.
Man made global warming is the mother of slow onset disasters.
Only it’s now beginning to speed up.
And it didn’t come with an instruction manual.
The recent increase of extreme weather around the world – and, ominously, in both hemispheres at once – fits the patterns predicted 40 years ago by the world’s scientists for increased frequency of such events, and in some cases (such as heavy downpours and snowfall) increased severity.
Man made global warming and ocean acidification began slowly in the 1800′s as the burning of coal spurred an industrial revolution, pouring more and more invisible heat-trapping carbon dioxide (CO2) up through chimneys into the atmosphere where much of it hangs around for 50 years and longer.
What distinguishes global warming from other slow onset disasters is that there’s hardly a realm of human activity that it does not affect – in citird and villages, banks and businesses, schools and living rooms, embassies and movie theaters.
The entire UN system is trying to help deal with these effects in many ways. Today it gave a glimpse of how.
The world is generally aware of negotiations like those here at the annual global climate summit wrestling over how to set a price for the world on carbon emissions … and how to get the rich nations, who put most of the CO2 in the air, to chip in and help poor countries, who put little CO2 in the air, adjust to the unwanted changes now advancing fast upon them.
Less well known is the network of 29 organizations that make up “The UN System Chief Executives Board for Coordination” – the CEB.
They are working together in an effort to help countries deal with the climate problem.
They include a few familiar acronyms like UNICEF (the United Nations Children’s Fund) and the WHO (the World Health Organization) … but some are less familiar to the public: WFP (World Food Programme), UPU (Universal Postal Union – helps coordinate postal rates between countries) and IMO (International Maritime Organization – see below.)
Complete Post at:
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/technology/2011/12/brief-note-about-a-slow-onset-disaster/
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