of the 1980s. And yet warming currently taking place is the product of a less energy-intensive age. Scientists believe that global warming has an inbuilt time lag. Today’s temperatures are the result of gasses released during the 1960s, before the age of the fully globalized economy.
It is impossible to predict the effects of global warming with any accuracy but they seem sure to be dramatic and quite possibly catastrophic, including massive disruption of agriculture, industry, and the food chains with unknown consequences; more storms of increased severity; more droughts and floods, including the flooding of low-lying islands and deltas. By way of only one example, it is thought that 100 million people now living in Southern Africa may be made environmental refugees by global warming as croplands face permanent drought.
Evidence of global warming is coming in thick and fast the world over. In September 1993, Norwegian scientists reported that data collected since 1983 revealed that the polar ice cap is melting 10 percent faster than it can be replaced. Researchers at the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) reported (September 1994) "the greening of Antarctica" as the ice recedes and summers lengthen. The BAS study reported a "rapid increase" in the continent’s only two flowering plants at sites 600 miles apart, with one flowering grass 25 times more common than it was 30 years ago. BAS scientist Dr. Lewis Smith said "This is part of the global warming situation…a sign of regional warming, which is part of what is happening to the climate globally." According to BAS, Antarctic summer temperatures now persist 50 percent longer than they did during the 1970s.
The European Sub-Polar Ocean Programme has found that the Ogden Feature, a tongue of ice which acts as a natural pump driving currents in the North Atlantic, has failed for the past three years in succession. This has never happened before. Dr. Peter Wadhams of the Scott Polar Research Institute reports that "Global warming is the culprit. It has reduced the area of ice in the Greenland Sea and cut off the process." (Independent on Sunday) The consequences are uncertain but it is thought that the failure of the Ogden Feature may weaken the Gulf Stream which keeps northern Europe much warmer than other regions at the same latitude; violent switches in the climate may be triggered as a result.
Paul Brown of The Guardian reports (July 6, 1996) that ice which has held the Swiss Alps together for 10,000 years is now melting at the rate of 30 meters per year in some places: "Scientists who advise politicians believe that countries like Switzerland are suffering irreversible damage," Brown writes, with villages threatened by the prospect of "tidal waves" of "melt-water descending on their homes" bearing "an avalanche of rocks" and "the collapse of cliffs that flank their valleys."
Alongside what we know, scientists also regularly warn us that there is plenty that remains unknown. During the early 1990s, the aim of the Joint Global Ocean Flux Study was to evaluate how much atmospheric carbon dioxide is absorbed into the oceans and how much is released from them. Previously, only general patterns were known. For example, warm, tropical waters tend to release carbon dioxide, while cold, high-latitude waters tend to absorb and store carbon dioxide. For this reason, oceanographers fear that in a warming world warmer seas may strongly amplify warming by releasing stored carbon dioxide. The problem is that the Ocean Flux study found astonishing variations in the carbon dioxide content of the North Atlantic over even short distances.
"The variations observed," concluded the authors of a paper in Nature, "suggests that estimates of the oceanic storage or release of carbon dioxide calculated from existing data will be subject to significant error."
Similarly, summarizing their results in a paper in Science magazine (August 23, 1991), 17 climate modelling teams from around the world found that, depending on the behaviour of clouds above melting snowy areas, the role of snow in global warmin