(1) The paper is not "new." It was received by Nature Climate Change on 30 Sept 2014, published online 26 October 2015, and in the Feb 2016 issue.
(2) It uses the worst case of the 4 scenarios in the IPCC's AR5 report: RCP8.5.
(3) Neither the papers describing RCP8.5 or the IPCC's AR5 describe RCP8.5 as a "business as usual" scenario. It's a useful worst case scenario, showing what happens if things go wrong.
Most importantly, it assumes population growth is faster than current projections assume (e.g., fertility in Africa does not drop, as it as almost everywhere else) and technological progress slows or stop (e.g., it assumes coal is the fuel of the last half of the 21st C, as it was in the last half of the 19thC).
Both of these are substantial changes from current trends -- the opposite of "business as usual." Experts consider neither of them likely. To name one obvious factor, renewables and natural gas are rapidly replacing coal, whose consumption is declining in every region (with the possible exception of China, whose numbers are unreliable). The cost of solar has reached grid parity in favorable areas, with great potential for more progress. Fusion has begun to attract private venture capital -- by smart people who have short time horizons.
See the paper: "Future temperature in southwest Asia projected to exceed a threshold for human adaptability" by Jeremy S. Pal & Elfatih A. B. Eltahir in Nature Climate Change, Feb 2016.
Citations available upon request, including links to the paper.
I agree with the article, but the title is not quite right. Governments usually win at counterinsurgency. But when foreign armies take the lead role they almost always lose. RAND and others have done good research about this.
A few important things to remember about this.
(1) The paper is not "new." It was received by Nature Climate Change on 30 Sept 2014, published online 26 October 2015, and in the Feb 2016 issue.
(2) It uses the worst case of the 4 scenarios in the IPCC's AR5 report: RCP8.5.
(3) Neither the papers describing RCP8.5 or the IPCC's AR5 describe RCP8.5 as a "business as usual" scenario. It's a useful worst case scenario, showing what happens if things go wrong.
Most importantly, it assumes population growth is faster than current projections assume (e.g., fertility in Africa does not drop, as it as almost everywhere else) and technological progress slows or stop (e.g., it assumes coal is the fuel of the last half of the 21st C, as it was in the last half of the 19thC).
Both of these are substantial changes from current trends -- the opposite of "business as usual." Experts consider neither of them likely. To name one obvious factor, renewables and natural gas are rapidly replacing coal, whose consumption is declining in every region (with the possible exception of China, whose numbers are unreliable). The cost of solar has reached grid parity in favorable areas, with great potential for more progress. Fusion has begun to attract private venture capital -- by smart people who have short time horizons.
See the paper: "Future temperature in southwest Asia projected to exceed a threshold for human adaptability" by Jeremy S. Pal & Elfatih A. B. Eltahir in Nature Climate Change, Feb 2016.
Citations available upon request, including links to the paper.
I agree with the article, but the title is not quite right. Governments usually win at counterinsurgency. But when foreign armies take the lead role they almost always lose. RAND and others have done good research about this.
For more about this dichotomy of insurgencies see this article at Martin van Creveld's website: http://www.martin-van-creveld.com/?p=295