Last week, more bad news came from Copenhagen. If you are well versed in the problem of climate change, particularly interested in environmental issues, or just regularly follow this series of climate articles in the weekly "Vreme", you probably weren't overly surprised by the latest announcement from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) from a climate meeting in Copenhagen. But if you haven't been paying too much attention until now, and now you've actually listened to the news about global warming for the first time, and yes - while the presenter wearily switches from "more important" news to the climate, don't change the channel or go get some chips - you may have been quite surprised that "humanity must completely stop using fossil fuels, coal and oil, by the year 2100 at the latest or there will be dramatic consequences for the planet". It is also possible that you were a little worried after this news.
The news from Copenhagen is not new, of course, but it is a new warning because it is based on the most accurate climate report that humanity has so far. Namely, in Copenhagen, in the organization of the IPCC, representatives of countries, science and politics gathered in order to make a synthesis of the reports that were published during the previous year, which are known under one name as Fifth report, and include the scientific basis, economic analysis, proposals on how to reduce CO2 and how to adapt to climate change. The result of the whole week's harsh negotiations came out to the media as a "dramatic scenario for the future of the planet".
Warnings about the serious consequences of climate change, however, do not come only from Copenhagen. This has been talked about ever since it was suspected in the 20s that something was wrong with the concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere and that the global temperature is therefore rising and the climate is changing. But in recent years, not only environmental activists, politicians and meteorologists are talking about climate change, but also nature itself. Serbia paid dearly for such a "notification" last spring - with unprecedented destruction during the flood wave in May 2014.
HAUNTED REGION: As always in the days after major accidents, after the devastating floods that hit Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia, the search for the culprit, i.e. the one who, by his actions or inaction, led to a catastrophe that has not been recorded in these parts since follows the hydrological situation. The search for the culprit in such situations is quite natural - many people were killed, thousands and thousands of citizens were left without houses and property, Obrenovac was destroyed, but also many other cities and settlements, entire areas changed their appearance due to water and landslides, destroyed is a significant infrastructure, and the total material damage has enormous proportions.
Thanks to solidarity, which, along with an unprecedented accident, was also not seen to that extent in Serbia before, the first consequences were removed. Significant funds for reconstruction were also collected from citizens and businesses as well as from foreign donors. A large number of people returned to their homes during the summer, numerous buildings were restored, and institutions in flooded areas are functioning. But half a year later, a significant number of people are waiting for the winter in unsuitable conditions, and the repairs and return to the old will probably take years, if not decades. According to several reports, the damage from the floods can be estimated at more than 1500 million euros.
With such dire consequences, someone simply has to be to blame. In the media across the Balkans, we see that the list of suspects is really long - the nominees were God, the government and the emergency headquarters, the ruling party, then the opposition and the leaders of local governments, then the winner of this year's Eurovision contest, as well as the entire nation with its sins, the police, the army, water companies, meteorologists and the Republic Hydrometeorological Institute (which are the only ones without a doubt completely innocent). Inevitably, HAARP, the United States Institute of Physics and Conspiracy Antennas, was also blamed.
And without a doubt, the most responsible culprit - climate change - has been forgotten. Although he is mentioned everywhere as a "butler" in the crime novel, even at the beginning of this text, the irony is that the public in Serbia is so deeply uninterested in this culprit that even such a terrible misfortune did not draw a little more attention to him. Namely, the intensity of the cyclone over the Western Balkans, which led to unprecedented rainfall in May 2014, and subsequently to floods, was so great that it fits perfectly into the matrix of predictions about what the consequences of global warming will be in the 21st century.
As the Institute of Meteorology of the Faculty of Physics of the University of Belgrade told Vreme, all climate models that predict what global warming will bring by the end of the century show that the Western Balkans region belongs to the so-called hot zones, where the consequences of climate change will have dramatic effects. The average increase in global temperature of 2 degrees until 2100 means that during the century there will be far more such disasters, cyclones, ice waves, and also floods, than there would be if man had not burned such a large amount of fossil fuels into the atmosphere in the last 140 years. released a huge amount of CO2.
A THOUSAND-YEAR EVENT: Whatever attitude you have about the tragedy of May 2014, when the water element broke through all the defenses at dawn on May 16 and penetrated into Obrenovac, the rebellious residents suddenly found themselves in the kind of event whose probability is extremely low. The aforementioned Fifth IPCC report, as the most accurate international scientific study on the state of climate change so far, announces just such a future for our region. The climate models on which the report is based always start from the so-called optimal curve, and then provide a risk assessment for various scenarios, including increases in frequency and strength. climatic extremes. That is why scientists believe that such unlikely disasters will become much more frequent. And that they are practically already happening.
To understand this, we need to look at how risk is assessed in general. For that, first of all, there must be exposure to danger. It is evident when it comes to floods - the whole region, and especially Serbia, is networked with water courses and floods are something that represents a threat in this area. Another aspect in the risk assessment is the source of the danger itself - that is, the cause of the flood waves. It doesn't take a particularly deep understanding of meteorology to understand why the threat of flooding has increased under climate change. Disruption of climate processes means that the difference in the intensity of precipitation will increase. And because they will intensify in some areas, it will lead to bigger floods much more often.
When you flip a coin and make a bet, you estimate the risk of losing the bet as a 50 percent probability. However, when you want to build a house and assess the risk of whether it will be destroyed by natural elements, another, although essentially similar, measure will mean much more to you. Instead of the probability of an extreme disaster that could destroy your building, it is more convenient to use the number of years in which such a major disaster occurs instead of percentages - whether the flood will occur after every 10 years, after 100 years or after 1000 years. In construction, it is an established norm that buildings are built in such a way that they are strong enough to withstand XNUMX-year weather conditions. That is, those that have been recorded as the largest in the last hundred years.
During the accident in Obrenovac, after previously raising the so-called red alert, meteorologists continuously said that a "thousand-year calamity" had befallen us. The consequence of climate change is precisely that extreme phenomena will occur much more often - millennial incidents will no longer have to wait a whole millennium to happen again. At the same time, the increase in global temperature means that not only the mean local values will be higher, but the cases of extreme temperatures will be more frequent. For Serbia, this means that during the hottest summer day in history, a temperature of 44 degrees will no longer be recorded, but it will theoretically be possible for the temperature to reach 52 degrees in the shade. The same will happen on the other side, with low temperature extremes. With the drought stalking the entire region in the second half of the century, with extremely low and high temperatures, floods and cyclones, living conditions will be much more difficult. The May floods show that the infrastructure in Serbia is not up to it (read about the adaptation in the next issue).
It is hard to believe in this attitude about the future when you have lived for so long in an area with such a moderate climate as in the Western Balkans, without almost any serious extremes, without deserts, tornadoes and icy winters, without too strong earthquakes, where the greatest misfortunes are produced by each other the people themselves. In other places it is not quite so. Despite not only technological but also social development, various natural disasters occur much more often in other parts of the world. Earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes and volcanic eruptions are reaching such proportions that hundred-year events are much more terrible than what the local builder has faced so far. With climate change, the butler opens the door and - extremes are now coming to our region.
In the next issue, on November 13, about adaptation to climate change
The views expressed in the article do not necessarily represent the views of the Heinrich Böll Foundation.
