In the Arctic, where the polar bears hunt and the seal cubs hide, the ice is melting. As temperatures rise, the ice breaks down and the new water runs off and into the sea. Across the globe, slowly, almost imperceptibly, the sea level has risen and its salt levels have been diluted. Global warming is at work.

Endangered Planet
by Stephen McGinty

Across Asia, savage storms and incessant rain this summer sent floods sweeping through Bangladesh and India drowning people in their beds and new-born infants tied to their mothers’ backs. When the waters finally receded, they revealed a death toll in the thousands.

In America, the devastation wrought by the four hurricanes Charley, Frances, Ivan and Jeanne that tore across Florida, smashing homes like twigs in their grasp, is calculated in the tens of millions of dollars. Last summer, central Europe was turned into a griddle on which whole countries were cooked and forests burned; Switzerland endured its hottest summer in 250 years and in France 15,000 people, mainly the old and infirm, succumbed to the heat.

The evidence for extreme weather is all around us and global warming has been saddled with the blame. You know the situation is serious when the Queen weighs into the debate - as she did last week at the eve of a major environmental conference in Berlin - or when Britain’s chief scientific adviser, Sir David King, describes climate change as a far greater threat to world stability than international terrorism.

Yet when you open the window to another dreich day, it’s hard to muster any concern for the fact that Scotland’s chilly temperatures may rise a couple of degrees as a result of climate change. An examination of the data, however, is enough to startle even those of us who pride ourselves on taking an ostrich-like attitude to the environment.

At the heart of the problem is the fact that the earth’s average global temperature has risen by 0.6°C since 1900. It is now beginning to rise at a rate of 0.2°C per decade. This may not sound much, but the consequences have been dramatic, most notably the melting ice.

In the Arctic, during the past 30 years, ice coverage has been reduced by 10 per cent and the thickness of the ice cut in half. Sea levels have risen by almost a metre within the last century. Glaciers are in retreat and at their lowest level in 5,000 years; 10 per cent of Switzerland’s glaciers melted during the furnace summer of 2003 and it is estimated 75 per cent could be gone by 2050. As Pal Prestrud, vice-chairman of the Arctic Council, explains: “Climate change is not just about the future; it is happening now. The Arctic is warming at twice the global rate.”

The blame for global warming has been laid at the door of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). These are by-products of industrialisation, belched out by the engines of the world since the mid-19th century, which is around the time the rise in the earth’s temperature began. The greenhouse gases have turned up the temperature by their ability to reflect the sun’s rays. Prior to their increased presence in the atmosphere, the rays hit the earth and bounced back into space. CO2 in the atmosphere acts like a cushion on a snooker table, with the sun’s rays hitting the earth, bouncing back into the sky, then hitting the CO2 and bouncing back to earth again.

Concentrations of CO2 in our lower atmosphere have risen by 34 per cent since the industrial revolution and are at an all-time high. Yet it’s not all the fault of industry; bovine flatulence and the methane emissions of other animals contribute to rising levels of greenhouse gases, as well as the simple tilling of a field, which turns over carbon.

Just as a pan of water on a hob slowly begins to bubble, so our global weather systems have begun to react. Throughout the 20th century we have experienced higher daily minimum temperatures across the globe, rainfall has increased over countries in the mid-to-high latitudes (such as Scotland) and dropped in the tropics. Three of the hottest summers on record, 1998, 2002 and 2003 have occurred in the last six years, which led scientists to dub the scorching months of July and August 2003 as “the summer of the future”.

Jacqueline McGlade, executive director of the European Environment Agency (EEA) says: “What is new is the speed of change. The glaciers, at sea level, like big tankers turning, take a long time to change. Now we see them changing direction and there are warning signals in many parts of our life.”

These signals are everywhere. America is experiencing more tornadoes; in 2003, India endured pre-monsoon heatwaves of unusual ferocity, which killed 1,400 as temperatures topped 49°C; in 2002 Australia suffered the longest drought in its recorded history; in the same year, floods killed 80 people in 11 European countries. Such events moved the UN World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) to say the world was experiencing a record number of extreme weather events.

Dr Buruhani Nyenzi, chief scientist of World Climate Applications, part of the WMO’s World Climate Programme, says: “Such extreme events are fully consistent with our understanding of global climate change resulting from human activities, which include burning of fossil fuel for transportation and industry, certain agricultural practices and natural factors, such as major earthquakes.” The WMO says “expected changes include continued warming and sea level rise, increased extreme weather events such as dry/wet spells which could be associated with severe droughts and floods, higher maximum temperatures associated with heatwaves.”

So exactly what can we expect in the future? It is a problem that Dr Gerald Meehl of the National Centre for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in the US has wrestled with for most of his professional life. His judgment is stark: “Extreme weather events will have some of the most severe impacts on human society as the climate changes.” Giant NCAR computers have taken in billions of variables in global weather systems, crunched the numbers and come up with startling predictions: hurricanes will increase in intensity, and El Niño - the anomalous warming of surface waters in the eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean which can result in extreme weather conditions - will get even warmer.

Heatwaves, which can kill more people in a shorter time than almost any other climate event, are also expected to rise in frequency, temperature and duration. The NCAR study found that in Chicago, heatwaves will rise by 25 per cent and last up to nine days. In Paris, the number will increase by 31 per cent and last up to 17 days. Freezes - winter cold snaps when the temperature drops below zero - will also fall in frequency and duration. In fact, it is estimated that by 2080, cold winters could disappear almost entirely from Europe.

Or the exact opposite could happen. So fickle are the world’s weather patterns that instead of warming up, Europe and North America could be plunged into a new ice age. This controversial theory was posited by the hit movie The Day After Tomorrow, and, like many Hollywood movies, there is a kernel of truth behind the schmaltz. Environmentalists fear that as Arctic ice melts, it will dilute ocean salt levels, which are crucial to carrying warm water around the globe and so preventing Scotland from enduring the same freezing winters as Nova Scotia and Moscow, which are on the same latitude.

Or everyone could be wrong. Although small in number, a group of scientists believes it is only man’s arrogance that convinces him his activities over the past 150 years, a millisecond in the life of the planet, has resulted in the Earth heating up.

What is known is that through its long history, the Earth has, like lungs breathing in and out, heated up and cooled down. A thousand years ago, southern Britain was more suited to growing vines than much of France. Yet for the next 700 years our weather grew colder, culminating in the little “ice age” in 1693, when millions across Western Europe died through harvest failures. In the 1650s, the Thames froze solid and fairs were held on the ice.

Economic losses as a result of freak weather have doubled in the last 20 years to around £6 billion, while thousands of lives have been lost.

As a result, scientists are anxious to develop an arsenal of “weaponry” they can use against rogue weather. In America, NASA has spent $500,000 ton research into how hurricanes can be re-directed or weakened. Researchers have found a satellite beaming microwaves around a storm would heat the water vapour and weaken its strength. A second solution is to disperse a biodegradable oil slick in the hurricane’s path to limit the amount of water it is able to evaporate. Other research is being carried out into how tornadoes can be tackled.

In Russia, the military has used “cloud-seeding” techniques to move rain away from St Petersburg during the city’s 300th anniversary celebrations in 2003. The same tactic has been adopted to help stimulate rainfall in China.

Yet our weather systems at their most ferocious illustrate a central paradox: If global warming is as a result of our actions, then we have switched on a “machine” that could take centuries to switch off - if it can be switched off at all. As Arthur “Bomber” Harris said of Nazi Germany: “We have sown the wind, now we shall reap the whirlwind.”

More articles on global warming:

• Arctic Is Warming Rapidly
• Arctic Thaw
• An Arctic Alert on Global Warming

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