Confusion Over "Climate Change Refugees"

By 2050, between 200 million and 1 billion people could see their homelands devastated by floods and droughts due to climate change, says the Foundation for International Environmental Law and Development. And news reports say they are bound to threaten US borders as they seek refuge in the West, even though the legal status of these "climate exiles" is still up in the air.

Ahead of this year's huge Copenhagen summit on climate change, there have been plenty of alarmist headlines in America's major media outlets, many focusing on new reports which outline the chaos that could result from migration due to climate change.

However, if you actually go back and read these reports, you'll see the fine print. No one really knows how climate change will affect global migration patterns. A few telling quotes from a few of the reports that are making the rounds:

• "The estimates of climate-change-induced migration are highly uncertain and ambiguous." ~ World Bank's "World Development Report 2010"
• "Estimates of the numbers of migrants and projections of future numbers are divergent and controversial, ranging from 25 to 50 million by the year 2010 to almost 700 million by 2050." ~ CARE International's "In Search of Shelter"

What concerns me more is that this simplistic viewpoint has very little factual analytical backing. Data on migration trends over time are bad. Data on climate change as they relate to migration are even worse. What is worse, migration experts are not necessarily talking to the experts on climate change.