There is a silent consensus among scientists and researchers that global warming is now a reality, and the only question is how much it can be arrested as it is too late to eradicate it. Holes in the ozone layer are the principal cause of global warming and scientific evidence shows that these holes have been caused by emissions of fumes and vapors form the Earth’s atmosphere. Although much discussion has taken place on the subject, little serious action has been attempted to curtail and control the emissions. The only real action that has taken place in the last decade since global warming became an issue is the banning of the use of a powerful chemical, Methyl Bromide which was widely used in agriculture. However the real causes of fumes are car exhausts, large factories as well as, believe it or not, aerosol sprays, all of which send powerful and noxious fumes into the atmospheres through these holes in the ozone layer.

For a very long time the United States government were in a form of denial of the potential threat to mankind that global warming can mean. However there seems to be a change in direction, with the admission that the Western World is burning too many fossil fuels and creating an excess of CO2 that is affecting the global atmosphere.

Statistics now show that the average temperature of the World has risen by one degree centigrade and will continue to do so. This phenomenon is the most obvious change in our lives that has been caused directly by the greenhouse effect. However the weather in the World has changed dramatically in so many ways. For example in the mid west of America as well as in Western Australia there have been already five years of the most continuous drought in living memory. Yet in Western Europe there have been serious flooding over the last few years and always in the summer months. Experts have explained that this has been caused by the build up of clouds of vapor reaching a bank of cold air. Exceptional heavy rainfalls occur in a short space of time in a highly localized area. The damage these floods cause runs into hundreds of millions, whilst in the drought stricken regions of the World the financial damage there is no less considerable.

There is no doubt that since the threat of global warming became a reality then the incidence of natural disasters also rose accordingly. Hurricanes and tornadoes that have stuck the Mexican Gulf of the United States as well as the Caribbean and Central America can be directly attributed to global warming and the unstable weather patterns that it causes.

The tsunami that struck the South Pacific in late 2004 with a loss of a quarter of million lives bad immense property damage could also put down to the effects of global warming.

Scientists have recorded that sea levels are gradually rising and will continue to do so as long as the Polar Caps continue to melt. Underwater volcanoes can erupt at any time and bring it with another catastrophe of similar proportions to the already ravaged people of that region.

However what global warming will mean is a shortage of fresh water for agriculture. Already the effects are being felt, and with the global population constantly on the rise, there are genuine fears of extensive food shortages in the next decade.

Mankind is facing a major challenge in handling the effects of global warming, which they may have woken a little too late to counteract. The process has begun which may be very difficult if not impossible to reverse. The development of synthetic fuels is a step in the right direction, but it is evolving very slowly.

Let us hope and pray that mankind as a result of the industrial developments of the last half century has not caused itself an ecological disaster of global proportions.