A catastrophe if global warming falls off the international agenda
Baku, June 27 (AZERTAC). A month's rain fell in a day last week in parts of Britain. There were 140 flood warnings in the north of England, rain forcing the evacuation of Croston and Darwen in Lancashire; elsewhere, it washed out the Isle of Wight festival. Indeed, rainfall over the last three months has broken new records - following two years in which less rain had fallen than at any time since the 1920s.
This is part of a wider pattern. It is not just that world temperatures are on average steadily rising, the weather everywhere is becoming more extreme. Eleven of the last 12 years have been the hottest on record, and the growing volatility in our weather is linked to global warming. As the earth warms, the relationships between ocean currents, the ice caps, atmospheric pressure and the jet stream become more turbulent, and the weather turns more unpredictable.
Twenty years ago these trends, already visible but less marked, prompted the first earth summit in Rio. The second one closed on Friday night with a political declaration as long as it was vapid. There were plenty of warm words and reaffirmations of intent - but nothing that might address the intense pressure on the natural environment.
It is inefficient, obstructs enterprise, inhibits freedom, regulates and taxes. Climate change activists want carbon taxes and to set targets for efficient resource use; they also want regulations to encourage environmentally friendly behavior. This is the back door through which socialism will be reinvented - and scientists have been unwittingly captured by wild leftwing environmental ginger groups. Or, as "revealed" by the famous leaked emails between scientists at the University of East Anglia, they are conspiring to delude the public like latterday Bolsheviks.
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