While the press around the world are having a field day with young Harry’s Nazi indiscretion, the desperate plight of our planet’s eco-system gets little or no mention. Yet each day that passes without people being reminded of there responsibilities to Mother Earth is another nail in her coffin.
Yesterday evening, BBC2’s Horizon programme drew attention to another life-threatening phenomenon for future generations called “global dimming”. Scientists looking at five decades of sunlight measurements have reached the disturbing conclusion threat the amount of solar energy reaching the Earth’s surface has been gradually falling.
This decline in solar gain could mean that global warming is a lot greater threat to the future of mankind than was previously estimated.
Dr Peter Cox, one of the world’s leading climate modellers, says this is bad news. He reckons we are going to be in a situation, unless we act, where the cooling pollutant is dropping off while the warming pollutant is going up. This means we’ll get reduced cooling and increased heating at the same time, and that’s a problem for us.
It means that within the next 100 years temperatures could rise by 10OC with catastrophic consequences. The UK would become like North Africa and equatorial regions would become uninhabitable. The ice caps would melt, the seas would rise, people would migrate north and south to find cooler climes yet there would be less landmass to accommodate them.
How many people watched the Horizon programme – about 1.5m! It should have been compulsory viewing for the entire UK population not to mention the rest of the world.
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