Archived press release

Will blair turn down the heat?

5 August 2003

The heat-wave baking Britain and Europe is yet another warning sign of the havoc mankind is wreaking on the world's weather, Friends of the Earth said today.

As temperatures approach record-breaking levels, more and more evidence is mounting that man-made pollution is destabilising the world's climate.

Analysis by the Hadley Centre - Britain's premier climate modelling centre - showed that globally 1998, 2001 and 2002 were the three hottest years on record [1].

Hadley Centre research published just last month showed that the warming affecting Europe and North America cannot be explained by natural causes, such as sunspots or volcanoes, but must be partly due to man-made pollution [2].

Last week, Sir John Houghton, Britain's leading climatologist and co-chair of the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change called climate change a `weapon of mass destruction'.

In June, a conference of climate scientists in Berlin concluded that warming in the future may be higher than previously thought, because the cooling effect of soot in the past had been underestimated [3].

Friends of the Earth Climate Campaigner Roger Higman urged Prime Minister, Tony Blair to reinvigorate efforts to persuade Russia and the US to ratify the Kyoto Protocol

"Britain is burning and man-made pollution is a contributory factor. Tony Blair was very happy to tour the world drumming up support for the war in Iraq. Why isn't he making a similar effort to combat global warming - which even his top climate scientist is calling a "weapon of mass destruction"?

Notes

[1] DEFRA 11 February 2003 "World is hotting up according to DEFRA report" www.defra.gov.uk/news/2003/030211b.htm

[2] The Met Office 28 July 2003 "Europe and North America warming due to human activity"
www.met-office.gov.uk/corporate/pressoffice/2003/pr20030728.html

[3] New Scientist 4 June 2003 "Global warming's sooty smokescreen revealed" www.ecology.com/ecology-news-links/2003/articles/6-2003/ ¬
6-3-03/smokescreen.htm

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Published by Friends of the Earth Trust