Saadia Haq contributed to this report.

4 Comments

1. 1. candide 10:01 AM 10/16/10

   "There is no scientific evidence that this is the case"
   
   Sorry, but that is just plain false. There is an abundance of SCIENTIFIC evidence that climate change caused these extreme floods. You seem to be confusing "scientific evidence" for "absolute proof." No scientific conclusion is 100% guaranteed.
   
   Early snow melts, from galciers like Puncak Jaya, meant rivers were already swollen. When combined with "historically high" rainfall there was no place for water to go.
   
   
   

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2. 2. blk 12:13 PM 10/16/10

   Sunny today and rainy tomorrow is weather. What we're seeing is long-term climate change: spring is coming earlier every year, plants, insects and animals have extended their ranges northward hundreds of miles (bringing tropical diseases with them), the Northwest Passage is opening in the Arctic, and the polar ice cap getting smaller and smaller every summer. The decade from 2000 to 2009 is the hottest on record.
   
   Claiming that the climate is not warming is simply a lie. Even the most vociferous semi-respectable global warming skeptics do not deny it's happening. They claim instead that humans are not responsible. They say it's the sun, the earth's orbit, or a normal cycle that we don't understand. They say that humans are too few and too insignificant to affect climate on a planet wide scale.
   
   But that's just ignoring the facts. There are almost seven billion people on the planet. In the short span of 150 or so years we have been burning coal, gas and oil that took billions of years to lay down. Natural processes cannot absorb that huge influx of CO2. As China and India begin to consume hydrocarbons at higher and higher rates the process will only accelerate. That CO2 is staying in the atmosphere and producing greenhouse warming.
   
   We also know that deforestation has dramatic effects on climate (look at the difference between Haiti and the Dominican Republic). Humans have chopped down 20% of the Amazon rainforest. Crops such as corn and soybeans allow more moisture to evaporate from the soil and promote a hotter and drier climate than trees and other rainforest vegetation do. Worldwide we are cutting down trees, burning them for fuel or just letting them rot at an alarming rate. All of this causes CO2 levels to rise, while eliminating the carbon sink that these trees represent.
   
   Finally, humans do control enough power to drastically change the climate: large numbers of nuclear weapons detonated simultaneously could send enough material into the stratosphere, which would cause a nuclear winter and another ice age. While burning fossil fuels doesn't have the same immediate impact, in the long term it's probably even more naked energy used to produce a gas that's choking our planet.

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3. 3. candide in reply to rodestar99 12:57 PM 10/16/10

   "There was no flooding last yr and there was this yr"
   
   Again you are factually wrong. There was flooding last year, just not catastrophic flooding, like this year. The reasons why are many, the glacier melt was not as bad last year, the monsoons did not start as early and were not historically heavy.
   
   Also, as another poster mentioned you seem to be confusing weather (short term, local effects) with climate (long term, global).
   
   As I said before there is an abundance of scientific evidence to support the conclusion that climate change played a major role in this years flooding in Pakistan, and nobody is more convinced of that that many Pakistani's themselves.

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4. 4. sillofthedoor 06:13 PM 10/16/10

   Are Pakistan Relief Efforts a Training Exercise for Climate Change Disasters?
   
   No, it is a climate change disaster

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