Recently we were told a slightly scary story by a friend who had met with the head of China for one of the big global consultants (who have to remain nameless we're afraid – but they are known by their initials, which narrows it down a bit). This guy and his firm make millions (indeed he personally makes millions) of dollars from companies like yours dispensing advice to your boss. The discussion centred on the most critical issues in the coming years in China: “climate change” said our friend, “there's no getting away from it.” Then he and the partner consultants in the room were taken aback when the China head launched into a tirade about climate change. “All rubbish,” he said, “So what if the world heats up a few degrees? If it's 80°C today and next year 82°C, or 83°C, who'll notice? Next?”
The room sat aghast, and nobody said anything as they needed their jobs and our friend was pitching a bit of business. So as a service to the outraged China chairman, we'll spell out what a few degrees of global warning means for China. You know we like to recommend books here at Access Asia, so we'll plug an excellent read we've mentioned briefly once before once again; Mark Lynas's Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet (click here to buy). The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warns that we could be faced globally with six degrees Celsius of global warming over the next 100 years. Lynas's book looks at what this will mean (degree by degree) for the planet and our lives. We've pulled out here the expected results for China just to cheer you up this morning:
1 degree – What we are seeing now basically: Certain areas becoming more prone to drought and others to flood, often alongside each other while the country's split between a wet south and dry north exacerbates. A reduction in melt flow waters from the Karakoram and Everest ranges adding to the strains on the water table and shortages of water, particularly in the northern portions of the country. An acceleration of monsoons in terms of regularity and ferocity while desertification continues apace. Respiratory illnesses, bronchitis and asthma rates to increase due to pollution.
2 degrees – Monsoons continue to worsen: Hong Kong particularly is expected to see stronger monsoons causing more damage, loss of life and testing building structures to the maximum as winds approach 200 miles per hour at the core and rainfalls increase boosting the severity of landslides. In northern China, the changing monsoon climate will stretch the periods between cool/dry and warm/wet leading to more and longer droughts and rising temperatures. At the same time, southern China can expect more flooding, with the floods starting to move eastwards. China's climate extremes will be significantly exacerbated, and water shortages worsened, even if the south-north water diversion project is successful. Contaminated food rates could increase as the warmer environment aids the spread of bacterial infections such as E.coli and Salmonella.
3 degrees – Carbon emissions continue to increase: This will place strains on the environment, with China forecast to surpass the US as the world's largest emitter according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). Flooding is expected to become a major problem for China at this point, with the regular southern China floods getting worse and moving up the coast. At 3 degrees, Shanghai, a deltaic city, is expected to start experiencing regular and substantial flooding due to heightened El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO). The worst ENSO was recorded in 1912 and saw Shanghai partly submerged and Henan, Hubei and Anhui flooded with a death toll of 100,000 people in the vulnerable rice growing areas. The era of the Super Hurricane will have arrived, and Shanghai, Hong Kong and Taiwan will be particularly vulnerable to them. 3 degrees is the point where China's agricultural production system could crash – lack of water for irrigation could cause 40% reductions in crop yields of rice, wheat and maize – in effect two thirds of current supplies to feed an estimated 1.5 billion people. Western China starts to face more severe water shortages for drinking and irrigation as melt flows from the glaciers around the Karakoram Mountains and Everest reduce.
4 degrees – Reduction of soil moisture caused by the northern droughts could induce a much faster and more rapacious eastward expansion of the Gobi Desert, and overall desertification in China across the Loess Plateau. Climate change will affect China's forests in the north east, as boreal conifer forests give way to encroaching hardwood invaders from the south – among the many consequences of this will be the loss of the habitat of the Siberian Tiger, increasing their threat of extinction. If current use trends continue, China will require 100 million barrels of oil per day by this point (current world production is about 80 million barrels per day and the 'peak oil' point is not that far off that). Near the border with Korea, rainfall could increase by 25% and land temperatures by 6°C, increasing evaporation resulting in flash floods followed by a more arid land surface than previously. Most worryingly perhaps is the evidence that between 3-4°C additional warming the additional heat in southern China may mean that rather than absorbing CO2 forests will start to reverse and begin emitting large amounts of CO2, potentially offsetting any gains made in reducing emissions.
5 degrees – Severe water shortages in the north and centre due to drought, and the almost total loss of the water table, could significantly affect agricultural production and crop yields as well as drinking water supplies leading to hoarding, severe price rises and social instability. Habitable land becomes scarcer, and the population will be squeezed between an increasingly unsustainable coastal belt (Shanghai could start to seriously submerge) as seas rise and floods intensify, and an increasingly arid north, as drought becomes more severe and the Gobi encroaches further. However, in southern and eastern China the increasingly ferocious East Asian monsoon could be dumping a third more water in the Yangtze than at present, and 20% more in the Yellow River, with flooding consequences along both rivers and their tributaries – do not expect to be standing on the Bund or sipping a Starbucks on the Pudong waterfront or to see much agriculture in the Yangtze delta.
6 degrees – The worsening East Asian monsoon exacerbates drought in the north of China, while increasing flooding in the south and eastern portions of the country as higher temperatures evaporate more water exacerbating aridness in the north. Extreme greenhouse episodes will lead to a more rapid hydrological cycle, with intense rainstorms washing valuable and essential nutrients off the land causing mass outbreaks of algae. This is already seen in a far milder form in the regular 'red tides' that lap the coast of China annually. These combined with a greater use of pesticides and other agricultural pollutants to make up for lost nutrients could lead to the 'red tide' becoming an anoxic 'dead zone' killing all sea and coastal life.
Welcome to Beijing's famous Tiananmen Square at 6 degrees
Enjoy your week.
This week's climate-concerned Update includes the fight back from London in the never ending China book wars, the possible new Brown-Paulson love in, Olympics news from IOC silence to the DPRK to smoggy Hong Kong and three reasons why the Liverpool-Shanghai twin cities relationship is daft.
