"You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows"

It’s becoming increasing obvious that the weather just isn’t what it used to be. For instance, last October was incredibly warm: for the time of year, temperatures should have been around 13C. In fact they rose to 21C on occasion. I was in New York in early November, & had been warned that the weather can be extremely cold around that time of year. As it was, the weather was sunny & almost Spring-like. On our last evening, it was even warm enough to eat outside.

There really has been some weird weather in recent years. In 2002, floods swept across large parts of Europe – including Britain – causing fatalities, disrupting lives & costing insurance companies billions. Back in 2004 a whole Cornish village (Boscastle) was almost completely destroyed by flash floods. We are experiencing some strange weather right now; quite apart from the fact that it’s extremely mild, it’s been very windy. This month, gale force winds across the country have caused a significant number of casualties & fatalities; gusts of up to 90 mph uprooted trees, brought down power lines, tore roofs off, & left whole areas of the country without electricity.

As I say, it’s hard to ignore. My tendency is to say that it’s down to ‘global warming’, though if anyone were to ask me what that actually means, I’m a bit lost. I mutter something about ‘the ozone layer’, ‘carbon footprints’, & ‘greenhouse gases’. If pushed I will mention ‘pollution’, ‘fossil fuels’ & ‘carbon dioxide’, then hastily change the subject before anyone notices that I really haven’t got a clue.

So I thought I’d inform myself. Evidently, global warming (or climate change) is caused by increased levels of carbon dioxide and other polluting gases in our atmosphere. The gases trap heat by forming a blanket around the Earth - like the glass of a greenhouse (hence the so-called ‘greenhouse effect’ I hear so much about). These gases stay in the atmosphere for many years &, as they build up, the planet’s temperature rises. This clears up what ‘global warming’ is, & what ‘greenhouse gases’ are.

It turns out that ‘fossil fuels’ are coal, oil & gas, & it is the burning of these that cause the ‘greenhouse gases’ (the other main cause being land clearing, such as the wholesale destruction of rainforests for cash crops).

The Hadley Centre for climate prediction & reseach has discovered that Britain has become twice as stormy as it was 50 years ago, apparently due to pressure changes on the atmosphere, which they say can be attributed to climate change. Though the researchers allow that an amount of climate change is inevitable with or without human contribution, they say that the severity of the change “is significantly larger than explicable by natural variation, and must be man-made climate change”. A collaborative report between Britain, Canada & Australia into these trends found that the most intense weather conditions were to be found over Europe, especially Northern Europe – in particular the UK. The Wikipedia entry on climate change also suggests that the increase in global temperatures can cause such changes, (e.g. a rising sea level and changes in the amount and pattern of precipitation); changes that may increase the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events ( floods, droughts, heat waves, hurricanes, and tornados).

This would seem to explain the weird weather we’ve been experiencing.

Seasons are altering as a result of all this. I’ve noticed myself over the past few years that both Autumn & Spring are changing; Autumn seems to arrive later, & Spring seems to be arriving earlier. Last year, some scientists proclaimed this to be “conclusive proof” of global warming. Whilst this may be good news for us humans, it’s not so good for the animal & insect kingdom. For example, if a bird that feeds on a specific insect that in turn relies on a specific plant for food, & any one of those responds to warming in a different way to the others, the whole system can break down.

Another word I’ve heard an awful lot about in connection with climate change is ‘Kyoto’ – I’ve used it myself, again in the hope that I’m not challenged, mainly because I have only the sketchiest notion of what it actually is. Having checked, I found out that it's a protocol drawn up by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. It commits industrialised nations to reducing emissions of greenhouse gases by around 5 % below their 1990 levels over the next decade.

So that sounds like a jolly good idea, then.

However, if and when the revised treaty takes effect in 2008, it will require all signatories – which includes the USA (who, incidentally, were the biggest polluter in 1990). Those who are skeptical of global warming, have stated that The Kyoto Protocol is a scheme either to slow the growth of the world’s industrial democracies, or to transfer wealth to developing countries as part of some kind of global socialist initiative. Frankly this seems about as paranoid as the whole ‘Reds under the bed’/House Un-American Activities Committee thing in the 40s & 50s, but there are certainly reasons why industrialised countries would dismiss global warming – specifically that halting CO2 emissions to the extent proposed by the Kyoto Protocol would seriously curb financial growth. Call me cynical, but my guess is that this is what’s really behind this theory.

To this end, large corporations have been working for many years to discredit global warming, claiming that the science used is inconclusive. Fake citizens’ groups & bogus scientific bodies have produced ‘reports’ detailing this. It was a calculated ploy to throw people off the scent & halting – or at least stalling – action on climate change, & it worked. Thankfully, these have pretty much been all universally discredited now.

There have been other, less obvious, casualties of climate change. Some retailers have suffered as a consequence of the recent unseasonal weather; for example, Moss Brothers issued a profits warning last Christmas in which they blamed the weather for the collapse in sales. This in turn has resulted in rumours of a take-over bid by Baugur, an Icelandic investor. All this occurred against the back-ground of a predicted rise in profit, leaving investors very confused indeed. Another company to suffer was Premier Foods, (the company behind Branston Pickle and Angel Delight), who blamed the recent spell of warm weather for loss in profits. In a statement they said that the mild weather had meant that Christmas trading had begun much later than usual. Robert Schofield, the group's chief executive, said:

"The warmer weather, which extended through to early December, has meant that Christmas trading has commenced later than expected, and the out-turn for the year is dependent on trading in the final two weeks of the year".

Many large investors have realised that the effects of climate change are very likely to present serious financial risks for the companies they have shares in. An initiative launched several years ago by the government aiming to build a realistic picture of the amount of carbon emissions by all the different companies (the Carbon Disclosure Project), presumably as an initial step towards reducing these emissions, has been signed up to by more than 225 top investment houses including Morgan Stanley & Goldman Sachs &. Companies themselves that have signed up include Tesco, BSkyB & Asda.

However, more than half of the top 500 global trading companies which expressed concern about climate change, had yet to implement a greenhouse gas reduction programme.

Projections by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change suggest that warming will increase more dramatically towards the end of the century unless serious efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions are brought in.

So now I feel that I can at least give a brief description of global warming if required. If I combine this with an earnest expression & some other big words, I could probably pass myself off as being quite knowledgeable. Depending on my audience, of course - clearly I wouldn't get away with it amongst green activists, but I do know far more than I did yesterday.