Old Farnhamians' Association

2005 Farnham Lecture

“Global Warming”

by

28 September, 2005

The Performance Studio at Farnham College had a full audience to listen to the 2005 Farnham Lecture, which was the seventeenth in the series to date. This year, Dr. Geoff Jenkins, who is considered a worldwide expert on climate change, gave a very interesting and informative talk entitled ‘Global Warming’. Supported by numerous graphics he gave the audience an insight into the problems that we face on Planet Earth, both now and in the future.

Dr. Jenkins produced evidence that in the main the planet is warming up and in one hundred years time we will be enjoying, or enduring, very hot summers and very wet winters. Snow will be a thing of the past and the seas levels will slowly rise and encroach on many coastal areas. Overall Africa and India will be the greatest losers with more drought and more tornados.

In this year alone there have been signs of ‘things to come’ and the tsunami in the Far East and the tornados in New Orleans and Galveston give us an idea of what to expect. The latter has not been proven to be the result of climate change, but it is likely. The first half hour of the talk was very depressing for the future of the planet and humanity as a whole.

Clearly evidence shows that we are responsible for the acceleration in the climate change and unless we begin to act sensibly our children and future generations will suffer. We cannot stop the changes, but we can do much to slow it down over the coming years. Firstly it needs all countries in the world to agree to help with this action, but the major culprit, which is the United States of America, has still to agree to take part.

Overall a thought provoking lecture and Dr. Jenkins spelt out the facts in a most professional manner. He has worked for the Met Office for many years and headed up the Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and is regarded as ‘the man Tony Blair talks to for the facts about climate change’. The audience left the hall feeling that it is about time humanity got its act together and did something to slow down this process and not just leave things as a legacy for our children.

Cyril Trust

400 Trust
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