Climate Change and Global Warming Are Not a Myth Judging by This Year's Extreme Weather
How can anyone doubt the accumulating evidence that something major and alarming has been happening to global weather patterns after this summer?
Unprecedented monsoon weather has put vast areas of Pakistan under water and displaced some 20 million people while mudslides have destroyed whole villages and towns in China. Russia is one of 16 countries that have declared 2010 its hottest ever summer and is facing the loss of up to a third of its wheat crop.
A large chunk of ice has separated from Greenland and Niger is suffering famine and floods and, again, the loss of its crops.
Is 2010 just one isolated and extreme summer?
Actually it's not if you look back over the last decade and remember from the Tsunami across S Asia in December 2004, the hurricane that destroyed much of New Orleans, major earthquakes in China and Haiti, flooding in the Irrawady Delta, Indonesia, and massive fires in dry weather in Greece and other parts of Europe because of dry, hot summers.
To the British-born environmental campaigner Lewis Pugh, who was recently interviewed by Riz Khan, on the TV Channel Al Jazeera, there's no question that the whole planet is at risk.
This is a man who has swum all the oceans, across the North Pole, where once there was ice, and in the Himalayas to highlight what is going on - and says he has witnessed for himself the changes that are happening in even the remotest parts of the planet, not just once but every time he goes back to these places.
He is in no doubt that the situation is urgent and of such overriding importance that all governments should be putting it at the top of their agendas.
Yet there is pessimism already about the possibility of agreement on action on global warming from November's next climate summit due in Cancun, Mexico.
US chief negotiator Jonathan Pershing is quoted in a BBC online article on August 7 as saying that many developed countries are back-pedalling from the progress that was made at Copenhagen last December.
He, also, warned that the extreme weather events of the summer were "consistent with the kind of changes" to be expected from climate change and that quick action was needed.
This is all putting even greater pressure on our abilities to make progress in producing enough food - at affordable prices - to make inroads into a scandalous situation where more than a billion people in the world are suffering from malnutrition if not outright starvation.
Of course, for some, it's all just another opportunity to make money. Speculators on the commodities markets must be rubbing their expensively manicured hands with glee at the fortune to be made in pushing up the price of such basics as wheat. Well, there's no money to be made in sub-prime mortgages any more and investors expect a return on their investment.
There have, however, been a few bright spots in the week's news.
They include an agreement between the US and Brazil that Brazil's