• Global Warming
 

Some scientists claim that because of the CO2 which is being pumped out by billions of humans going about their normal business, billions more cattle, sheep, etc taking in oxygen and breathing out carbon dioxide and our lemming-like rush to burn fossil fuels which have been accumulating for millions of years the Earth's temperature is rising, which has worried many environmentalists who fear that we may be facing catastrophes that range from rising sea levels right up to the total annihilation of the human race. Many well informed people are convinced that the process of global warming has now gone so far that it cannot be reversed, even if mankind had the means to do it. But is this the only scenario? There are dissenters who take a different view, and believe that there may be a silver lining to the cloud of doom and perhaps, over all, the warming of the globe may actually do more good than harm.

Since humans first evolved, they say, cold has been a far greater threat than warmth and it is still not so long ago that most of what we now consider to be the advanced world was covered to a huge depth in snow and ice. The possibility of growing sufficient food to feed the world's population under such conditions is pretty well unthinkable. Even in the present day tens of thousands of people die as a direct or indirect effect of low temperatures. Predictably this theory doesn't hold water according to the pessimists who feel that not only do heatwaves kill large numbers of people but they also encourage the growth in numbers of disease carrying insects and provide a favourable environment for bacteria.