Solving the problem:The first tranche of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's Fourth Assessment Report on Climate Change has few surprises. This is not because its contents are not frightening in their implications for the future of our planet, but because the main thrust of its conclusions have been in the public domain for some considerable time.
Moreover, yesterday's report focuses mainly on likely developments in the global physical environment, but does not attempt to spell out the indirect effects on humankind. These issues will be addressed in sections of the IPCC's assessment to be published later in the year.
As it happens, the issue of how humanity might be affected by climate change was authoritatively addressed last October in the aptly named Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change, using scientific premises indistinguishable for practical purposes from those just promulgated by the IPCC.
The question Sir Nicholas Stern answered very clearly was: "Why should we worry about climate change?"
Some of us, after all, may have a sneaky feeling that a little global warming here in Ireland might do no harm at all; in any event, we might feel, nothing much is likely to happen for half a century or more, and technology is sure to solve the problem without interfering too much with our improving lifestyle. But Stern firmly dispels this insular assessment.
Stern warns that if we continue with business as usual, then in the course of the present century the sudden shifts in regional weather patterns will threaten the livelihoods of tens of millions of people; there will be increased deaths from disease and malnutrition; and there is a possibility that up to 200 million people may become displaced by rising sea level.
There will be serious risks of violent conflicts in vulnerable areas of the world, and of major disruption to economic and social activity on a scale similar to that experienced during the two world wars and the economic depressions of the early 20th century.
In our part of the world, therefore, it is not the physical changes in the local weather that we most should fear; of far, far greater concern is the worldwide social, economic and political turmoil almost certain to accompany a shifting global climate. Clearly Ireland would not be unaffected by these potentially apocalyptic happenings.
Three questions, therefore, come to mind. What should we do? How can we do it? And will it work?
In the context of what ought to be done, it is crystal clear that the "we" concerned is not we in Ireland, nor even we in Europe. Global warming is not a regional or a national problem, and certainly not one soluble by voluntary individual effort, however well-intentioned.
As Stern puts it: "An effective response to climate change will depend on creating the conditions for international collective action."
It is a global issue, and can only be solved on a global scale when the overwhelming majority of the world's governments accept the need to act in concert to implement, from the top down, the inevitably painful measures.
The cure itself, in broad terms, has been identified. The precise figures you choose depend on which experts you consult, but there is an identifiable spectrum within which the solution, more than likely, lies. If we are to prevent catastrophic climate change in this planet it will necessary to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions to somewhere between 10 and 50 per cent of current levels within a timeframe of somewhere between 10 and 50 years.
Even the benign end of this spectrum - a reduction of 50 per cent in 50 years - is challenging, and is almost certainly inadequate; at the harsh end, a 90 per cent reduction in 10 years is clearly unattainable.
As regards how the desired effect, whatever it may be, can be achieved, we read of the solutions in this paper every day.
They are all familiar. They include lifestyle changes in the richer countries leading to less energy consumption; more efficient use, and cleaner generation, of essential energy; increased use of renewable resources; greatly improved husbandry of the world's forests; and the increased use of nuclear power, despite its disadvantages.
But will it work? One would delight in an optimistic view of the likely outcome of global efforts to contain climate change, but all the evidence suggests the contrary. The Kyoto Protocol, for example, and its likely successors - even if universally adopted and their provisions faithfully observed, which is not the case - are good in principle but "too little, too slow" to be effective.
Meanwhile China, according to the September 2006 Scientific American, is constructing the equivalent of one large coal-burning power station every week, and power providers in the United States are expected to build some 280 coal-fuelled electricity plants between now and 2030.
The Asean countries of southeast Asia expect to triple their greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. In Ireland greenhouse emissions are up 26 per cent on 1990 levels, and we are building a new terminal at Dublin airport to allow air traffic to increase still further.
Does all this add up to a world taking global warming seriously? Clearly not; all the signs suggest that the world will fail in its struggle against global warming.