Azerbaijan, Baku, 1 July / Trend corr E.Tariverdiyeva/ The fact which a couple of years ago seemed to us to be fantastic during watching a popular American apocalyptic science-fiction film 'The Day After Tomorrow', is happening just now - Pacific Gulf Stream, warming northern continents, is changing its direction. As a result of these minor changes, Europe and United States will find themselves surrounded with only cold streams, which means 'the day after tomorrow'.
Global warming is underway, threatening not only with climate changes but also economic problems.
The world and the mankind are threatened with a global environmental apocalypse, which will come much sooner then supposed - now we are already counting decades. According to distressing forecasts of British oceanologists, in a short period of time the Gulf Stream may completely disappear and the air temperature in Europe may drop by some 10 decrees centigrade. "The warm oceanic steam has weakened a third during recent 12 years. The cause for that are Siberian rivers and Arctic glaciers," The Guardian reported.
The consequences of global warming may be irreversible: beginning from bad harvests and depletion of fish to human catastrophes emerging from hurricanes and floods, or struggle for energy resources - oil and gas. The list of climate-related threats is endless. They may directly provoke conflicts or escalate ongoing tensions, which may lead to a war.
Soil erosion, growing level of the World Ocean, melting glaciers and increasing storms will lead to new outbreaks of military operations and social shocks in most part of Africa, Asia and South America, where most of the population is poor.
Climate-caused migration in these countries is leading to bloody clashes, such as happened at the border of Sudan and Chad at the beginning of May.
In case of hothouse gases are not decreased two times, in several decades of years that will lead to large-scale migration to cover hundreds million people.
The break-neck growth of prices for power resources and food leads to sharp increase in inflation and instability in some countries. The volume of produced bio fuel is increasing with the prices going on to rise threatening to damage the world financial system, market participants say. "The fight against climate changes causes further increase in food prices. One can do nothing about it. People have to be accustomed to such high prices,' said Josef Stieglitz, Nobel laureate on economy.
Due to global worming, drought become frequent by damaging harvest both in Europe and Asia, which lead to price rise. The drought covers more and more territories by ever day because of the global warming and it has doubled since 1970. As a result, companies spend huge money for water-desalinating plants or water supply from other zones. The document, worked out by 18 European charitable and humanitarian organizations, says that the key reason for this oppressive situation is climate changes. One of the authors of the report, Endru Sims, believes that the global warming affects the poorest countries. "We witness flood in densely populated coastal regions, which damages agriculture and causes increase in number of starving people," Sims said. "The damage inflicted to Bangladesh in last two months made up 5% of its GDP," Sims said.
Europe and Russia are also located in the zone of risk. Temperature will go up and the territory of harvest land will decrease. Sumer drought in Europe damages huge number of agricultural products.
The global warming can have bad consequences for Russia 65% of territory is covered with permafrost since frost begins to grow soft and housing and industrial infrastructure built on it can be destroyed. By 2010, the average annual temperature in the northern territories of Russia can go up from 1.8 to 4 Celsius degrees.
The permafrost is retreating and snows are melting very rapidly. The ice only in the West Siberia is reduced by 4sm every year. There are already changes in infrastructure facilities in the northern territories of Russia and one fifth of the accidents take place because of the impact of the global warming.
The situation is further aggravated by the fact not all the states fight global warming. For instance, recently the US Congress did not pass Bill which was supposed to restrict the emission of the greenhouse gases. The majority of the Senators opposed this Bill claiming that it will lead to the rise in energy source expenditures. However, US should be concerned about the climate changes most of all.
The humanitarian disasters caused by the global warming, rise in migration and shortage of food and water can make the transportation and up-keep of the America forces abroad much more expensive which will lead to the drop in their combat readiness. US should be ready for the significant influx of immigrants as quarter of the countries all over the world whose territories are subject to warming because of melting of ice, are located in the Caribbean region. Moreover, the US military facilities on the coastal zones will also face threat in the years to come.
The mankind tries to avoid the terrible destiny of heroes of the film The Day After Tomorrow; however, little will be done in this regard for a long time. One does not need to be economist or scientist to see the impact of the global warming on each of us. Sometimes it seems as if the mankind has already lost the fight against human catastrophe.