GW and Neal Asher's Grapes of Wrath

So, Oxfam has a new study showing that, as a direct result of greenhouse gas emissions, natural disasters have increased four-fold in the last two decades:

The world suffered about 120 natural disasters per year in the early 1980s, which compared with the current figure of about 500 per year, according to the report.

And worse...

...the number of people affected by extreme natural disasters, meanwhile, has surged by almost 70 percent, from 174 million a year between 1985 to 1994, to 254 million people a year between 1995 to 2004, Oxfam said.

Floods and wind-storms have increased from 60 events in 1980 to 240 last year, with flooding itself up six-fold.

But the number of geothermal events, such as earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, has barely changed.

And still worse, the hardest hit are going to be the poorest nations.

So okay, that sounds bad. But, as I discovered just today, Neal Asher has already pointed out the good news. As he posted back in September:

Global warming, we are told, is a bad thing, yet I cannot help but notice, that with the return of a few warm years, like we had in the 40s, in the medieval warm period, in Roman times, during the Holocene Maximum, certain things that are now occurring: farmers being able to keep their livestock grazing throughout the winter, massive plankton blooms off Cornwall being fed upon by a record number of basking sharks, it maybe becoming possible for us to grow decent wine grapes in Britain, like the Romans did, you know, when it was warmer than it is now.

So, the good news is that we in the developed world might be too drunk on all that awesome new wine that we can now grow to notice that the third world will probably be, you know, genuinely fucked. Nice work, Neal. Not everyone can have their very own 'series of tubes' moment.