Helping Bangladesh a bad idea

Nate Silver has quit the NY Times, published an article on the cost of extreme weather caussed by global warming, and apologized to the global warming alarmists.

Mearnwhile, in a desperate attempt to find someone harmed by global warming, the NY Times blames us for problems on the other side of the world:

Climate scientists have concluded that widespread burning of fossil fuels is releasing heat-trapping gases that are warming the planet. While this will produce a host of effects, the most worrisome may be the melting of much of the earth’s ice, which is likely to raise sea levels and flood coastal regions.

Such a rise will be uneven because of gravitational effects and human intervention, so predicting its outcome in any one place is difficult. But island nations like the Maldives, Kiribati and Fiji may lose much of their land area, and millions of Bangladeshis will be displaced.

“There are a lot of places in the world at risk from rising sea levels, but Bangladesh is at the top of everybody’s list,” said Rafael Reuveny, a professor in the School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University at Bloomington. “And the world is not ready to cope with the problems.” ...

At a climate conference in Warsaw in November, there was an emotional outpouring from countries that face existential threats, among them Bangladesh, which produces just 0.3 percent of the emissions driving climate change. Some leaders have demanded that rich countries compensate poor countries for polluting the atmosphere. A few have even said that developed countries should open their borders to climate migrants.

“It’s a matter of global justice,” said Atiq Rahman, executive director of the Bangladesh Center for Advanced Studies and the nation’s leading climate scientist.

This is backwards thinking. Bangladesh is a dysfunctional country. Even the name sounds like some sort of wasteland, instead of a real nation. They have too many people, and they cannot even take care of themselves.

Though Bangladesh has contributed little to industrial air pollution, other kinds of environmental degradation have left it especially vulnerable.

Bangladesh relies almost entirely on groundwater for drinking supplies because the rivers are so polluted. The resultant pumping causes the land to settle. So as sea levels are rising, Bangladesh’s cities are sinking, increasing the risks of flooding. Poorly constructed sea walls compound the problem. ...

In an analysis of decades of tidal records published in October, Dr. Pethick found that high tides in Bangladesh were rising 10 times faster than the global average. He predicted that seas in Bangladesh could rise as much as 13 feet by 2100, four times the global average. In an area where land is often a thin brown line between sky and river — nearly a quarter of Bangladesh is less than seven feet above sea level — such an increase would have dire consequences, Dr. Pethick said.

The West has helped them overpopulate too much already. The world is a changing place, and so is human population. Maybe it would be a good thing if more of Bangladesh were under water. I certainly do not think that we should stop using carbon so those people can make a bigger mess of their country.

It is silly to think that some people should be compensated because they might have to move over the next century. A lot of people move every 5 years, and it is no big deal. These Third World countries are very much better off for Western industrialization. They certainly did not object, or propose to do it any differently. They benefit from better food and other goods. They should appreciate it. Industrialization was not a mistake, and there is no need to apologize for it.