@ Miacat,
<< The over population is out of context less we look at ourselves as well throughout the world. The footprint of these people is less then ours.>>

The comparative footprint argument is a RED herring, its subtext: if only the resources of the world were shared there would be no more need & hunger.There are two things wrong with this;
1) It would suffice just so long as it took for the population to double or quadruple,then, there would be need for a further redistribution,and so on and so on, and
2) You would need an Al-Shabab to administer such an arrangement.

Here’s a reality check:
“The population of Somalia in 2003 was estimated by the United Nations at 9,890,000… 44% of the population under 15 years of age… According to the UN, the annual population growth rate for 2000–2005 is 4.17%, with the projected population for the year 2015 at 15,263,000.”
Population - Somalia - growth, annual http://www.nationsencyclopedia.com/Africa/Somalia-POPULATION.html#ixzz1Tcu1hmkX

<< . As the article on SBS says.... "The biggest cause of the Somalia famine is the failure of the state to protect its citizens. Twenty years ago we saw a famine unfold and we saw a failure of the international community to intervene effectively to protect these vulnerable people who didn't have a government to look after them.>>

Any international intervention of the type Miacat is hinting at would involve ground troops , à la the current African Union intervention but on a much, much bigger scale ( think of Afghanistan & the Taliban). And if such intervention occurred, after a couple of years of mayhem, it would give Miacat and his ilk further reason to blame the West for the plight of the Somalis

More information: 7 Billion and Counting," David E. Bloom, Science, July 29, 2011”. The demographic picture is indeed complex, and poses some formidable challenges, which are not insurmountable.

We have to tackle some tough issues ranging from the unmet need for contraception among hundreds of millions of women and the huge knowledge-action gaps we see in the area of child survival, to the reform of retirement policy and the development of global immigration policy.

It's just plain irresponsible to sit by idly while humankind experiences full force the perils of demographic change. However for those with children remember this the infant mortality rate in Somalia is 225 per 1,000 live births compared to 4 per 1,000 in Australia.

The Cold War so profitably outsourced to the Horn of Africa and created these challenges and a catastrophe with climate change in Somalia.Somalia has no arms factory but is awash with weapons from the merchants of death in the rich countries including Saudi Arabian financiars, nearly all of whom violate the 20 year UN arms embargo.
The greed, moral bankruptcy and gravy trains of the worlds rich continue.

If only evolution had mankind had the sense to match its wit.

PEST. Once again, let me tell you, loud and clear, "The situation has nothing to do with climate change", it is a result of weather and overpopulation.

David

Does it VK3AUU
In a New Scientist  article it statedd that by 2040 the melting Greenland glaciers would increase sea levels by 5 metres. The amount of world food production lost by that 5 m flooding would kill a billion people or so. That 5 metre figure is under peer review  but even if it was only 2 m it would be a catastrophe in Australia.  and wipe out billions of people in coastal cities. Another New Scientist  article shows severe climate change in latitudinal region that Somalia is in.

 Also september 29th, 2010 in Space & Earth / Earth Sciences  Enlarge  An Antarctic iceberg. Scientists estimate West Antarctica is losing between 60 and 150 billion tons of ice per year. Ice currently covers more than 10 percent of our watery planet, yet its volume is continuing to decline at a staggering pace in response to our warming world. A new NASA interactive tool lets you take a close-up tour of some of the places around our planet where climate change is taking a toll on Earth?s ice cover, including:
 
?Greenland, where the massive Ilulissat Glacier is depositing 35 to 50 cubic kilometers of icebergs into the ocean each year, raising sea level (a cubic kilometer is about  264.2 billion gallons, enough to fill 400,000 Olympic-size pools) 

? The Arctic, where sea ice continues to decline in both area and volume.  ? Antarctica, where massive ice shelves the size of some small U.S. states have collapsed in recent years  Experience the Global Ice,  Provided by JPL/NASA    "Sentinels of climate change ." September 29th, 2010. www.physorg.com/news204969981.html 

PEST, I am not a climate change denier. I have been watching the results of AGW for quite a long time, particularly the melting of the glaciers and the ice caps as you so rightly point out. However, up till now, the effects of all this on the weather has been minimal. We had a very hot dry summer a couple of years ago in Victoria, followed last year by an exceptionally wet one, but these are weather events, not a result of climate change. The weather in southern Victoria this winter is about the same as we used to experience for about a decade back in the eighties. Climate change is up till now a very slow process, we may not see any tangible results for a few more decades, unless we live in low lying coastal areas.

You should go back to the first post on this subject written by Cheryl. I don't always agree with her, but in this instance I think she is right on the money.

David

VK3AUU - I'm not a climate change denier either but I am sceptical of the idea of anthropogenic CO2 being mostly responsible for the observed trend in warming. You seem to be more convinced of AGW than me but thank you for providing a very, very, very rational view of the difference between weather effects, climate and long term changes to the physical attributes of the planet. This stands in stark contrast to PEST’s hysteria.

I also agree with Cheryl's brief but eloquent first comment. It’s almost as if the author threw in the climate change angle for good measure but I think it acts as a distraction. Or, she wants to make “the west” feel guilty because AGW has caused this famine and milk this guilt for support, monetary or otherwise. I sadly suspect the latter is true – this does not make Lena a bad person (I think she genuinely wants to help) and often the results can justify the tactics but I just really resent being lied to.

There are many elements at play in the current situation in the Horn of Africa. I think the author touched on an interesting concept targeting the women in the community – there has apparently been some amazing success with the use of micro-loans in poor communities in developing countries, especially by giving women opportunities to break the poverty cycle and become more independent. But I think Somalia is such a basket-case that these ideas have little chance of success there at the moment.

So what’s the solution? There are a few options:

- We do nothing. Millions starve and we just turn the TV off for a couple of weeks.
- We provide food and medical aid to cope with the current emergency.
- We raise an army and invade Somalia to break the strangle-hold of the war-lords.

Human nature will not allow the first. The second will obviously be enacted and nobody has enough money left over for the third (besides, there has been a couple of fairly unsuccessful, unpopular and expensive examples of this lately).