A hard rain

摘要

Summer's here at last. It must be; I've been rained on hard in three different time zones in the space of two weeks. The weather here in London is its usual changeable self, which comes as some relief after last year's barely bearable heatwave. Indeed, so hot was the summer of 2003 in northern Europe that it lent support to claims that global warming, caused by human intervention, is having a profound effect on weather patterns. Such claims have been highlighted again this year, though from the unusual angle of Hollywood. Only Rip van Winkle could have missed the saturation marketing for the movie The Day After Tomorrow, which posits an ice age descending on the populated areas of the northern hemisphere as a result of the diversion of the Gulf Stream by cold water melting from Antarctica. Such a scenario is not necessarily that farfetched; recent research suggests that natural events (mostly in Canada, apparently) have caused a number of such disruptions to ocean currents over the aeons. Inevitably, such events will occur again, with or without the aid of humankind. It is a sobering thought that the great cities of Northern Europe and North America will one day be ground to dust under untold millions of tonnes of ice, but there's not a great deal we can do about that. We'll just have to up sticks and move to the Sahara, which should be nicely temperate by then.