Adaptation to Climate Change: A Spatial Challenge
As it becomes clear that climate change is not easily within the boundaries of the 1990’s, society needs to be prepared and needs to anticipate future changes due to the uncertain changes in climate. So far, extensive research has been carried out on seve
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Rob Roggema
Adaptation to Climate Change: A Spatial Challenge
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Rob Roggema Rijksweg 69 9791 AA Ten Boer The Netherlands [email protected]
ISBN 978-1-4020-9358-6 e-ISBN 978-1-4020-9359-3 DOI 10.1007/978-1-4020-9359-3 Springer Dordrecht Heidelberg London New York Library of Congress Control Number: 2009929308 © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009 No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher, with the exception of any material supplied specifically for the purpose of being entered and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use by the purchaser of the work. Printed on acid-free paper Springer is part of Springer Science+Business Media (www.springer.com)
Foreword
I had the privilege to be invited for a Learning Journey to Greenland in May 2009, organized by the Tällberg Foundation. We stayed at Illulisat, one of the places where the Icefjord Glacier comes into the ocean. We learned and observed how the glacier withdrew 60 kilometres since the beginning of the industrial revolution in the second half of the 19th century. In the last year, not less than 15 kilometres were added to it! This large and alarming withdrawal is just one of the indications that the rise of the average world temperature, the melting of the ice at the North Pole, the size of the dark blue deserts in the oceans, and the increase in CO2 concentration in the atmosphere are larger than predicted in the computer simulations that are the basis of the IPCC reports. These alarming empirical data about climate change and its effects were the starting points for the Greenland journey presentations of the climatologists Dorthe Dahl-Jensen (University of Copenhagen, Denmark) and Johan Rockström (Stockholm Environment Institute). One of the explanations is the fact that the IPCC models do not include interaction effects between different environmental effects of climate change and consequently predict a rather linear increase of temperature with increased CO2 emissions and a gradual decrease in temperature when we reduce CO2 emissions. This results in too positive predictions in the near future and the false belief that a large increase in temperature can be corrected by simply reducing CO2 emissions. Instead, we will experience much larger, shock wise increases of temperatures in the near future, resulting in for us and other living organisms very unfavourable new equilibrium that may well remain stable for 100,000 years, as Lovelock predicts in his fascinating book The Vanishing Face of Gaia. A last Warning (London: Penguin Books 2009). Starting from the same premise that climate change will be quicker and more dramatic, the present book has four great merits. First, it shows in a very concrete way how climate change will affect almost all aspects of our physical and social environment, and as a consequence, of human life. Second, starting from t
