[quote="Trailer"]
Phew. Generally this obsession with climate change just wears me out. Just too suspicious of too many 'experts' with too many vested interests to jump this band wagon... [/quote]
I wish I could share your doubts about global warming. Unfortunately, unless you believe that all the scientists who measure atmospheric and sea temperatures, and all those who study the retreat of glaciers, are part of some gigantic conspiracy to mislead us, one has to accept recent rises in temperature as an established fact. Likewise the increase in atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide and other 'greenhouse gases' is another established fact.
The $64,000 question is of course whether these two observations are or are not related as cause and effect. Any fool with a knowledge of elementary physics and atmospheric chemistry can predict that greenhouse gases
could lead to rises in temperature - the issue is whether they are actually responsible for all or most of the observed warming. For me and most other scientists/ environnmentalists, the answer was put essentially beyond doubt some years ago when modelling became sufficiently sophisticated to predict just how much warming there ought in theory to be, and those predictions were worryingly close to the experimental results.
That said, the area in which politicians and legislators are undoubtedly struggling - and where I agree with you about jumping on bandwagons - is deciding what actually to do about it. Most of the actions taken or suggested so far are frankly gesture politics - anything with any chance of stabilising temperatures sufficiently close to their current levels is going to be both difficult and fiendishly expensive. I fear that I include the much-vaunted Kyoto protocol in this. George Bush was probably right to refuse to commit the USA to it - if only he had come up with a more effective solution instead of shutting his eyes to the whole affair.
Two weeks ago the Financial Times reported on a study for the European Commission, as yet unpublished, analysing what global warming was likely to mean for the countries of the EU. Northern Europe comes off fairly well, with its agriculture in particular benefitting from increases in temperature and in the length of the growing season - it's the Mediterranean (including Symi) which will suffer most by becoming unreasonably hot. Or, as one of my former colleagues used to put it when lecturing on the importance of taking heed of the threats posed by global warming, if he was unsuccessful in getting that message across he could at least have the consolation of enjoying his retirement in a Mediterranean climate on the beach at Reading!