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THE latest study to suggest that global warming is a real phenomenon, and one caused by human action, adds further weight to a body of scientific evidence that has been accumulating steadily in recent months, as research institutions and governments have made the issue a higher priority.
The phenomenon has come up during President George W Bush's current visit to the European Union, as it has been a matter of severe disagreement between the Bush administration and EU member states.
Several big scientific studies have recently come to fruition, most notably a four-year examination of the Arctic by more than 250 scientists that found the ice cap was only half the thickness of 30 years ago.
Others, that include evidence that the sea is growing more acidic and that biodiversity is under threat, were presented at a climate change conference in Exeter, south-west England, earlier this month.
The conference was called by Tony Blair as part of his plan to bring climate change to the top of the agenda for the UK's chairmanship of the Group of Eight (G-8) industrialised nations this year.
Global warming is caused by an increasing concentration of certain so-called "greenhouse gases", such as carbon dioxide, in the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide is one of the by products of burning fossil fuels, such as coal and oil.
These gases have the effect of trapping infra-red radiation on the earth, instead of allowing it to dissipate into space. The greenhouse effect has been known to science since the 19th century.
Global warming is not a simple question of rising temperatures, however, although temperatures certainly have risen, by at least 0.60C in the course of the 20th century.
As the world heats up, the effects on the planet's weather systems are unpredictable.
More storms, droughts, floods and periods of unseasonal weather are likely as a result of the changes in climate brought about by burning fossil fuels.
Bush's visit to Europe this week has been presented by the President as an opportunity to repair relations with Europe over climate change.
"We care about the climate," he said before his journey to Europe, while setting out some of the US's existing actions on climate change, chiefly the development of new technologies that will replace fossil fuel.
The US is the world's biggest emitter of carbon dioxide and was responsible for about 20 per cent of the world's total emissions of the gas in 2000, according to the Pew Centre on Climate Change, a US research organisation.
But European governments and climate change specialists are likely to be wary of approaches that rely on long-term technology development and bilateral agreements dealing with certain aspects of climate change, instead of multilateral agreements on taking immediate action to curb carbon emissions -- the approach that the EU and the United Nations have taken.
Last week saw the entry into force of the UN-brokered Kyoto protocol on climate change, which binds developed nations to strict limits on the amount of greenhouse gases they are allowed to emit.
The US has refused to ratify the protocol, and has been accused of stalling talks aimed at forging a new agreement on carbon dioxide emissions to replace the main provisions of the treaty, which expire in 2012.
Moreover, a central contention of Bush President on climate change, reiterated by the US delegation to the Kyoto protocol talks last December, is that there has to date been insufficient scientific research to establish whether or not climate change is really occurring, and is the result of human action if it is.
The latest study from the Scripps Institute challenges that view.
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FT Syndication Service
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