Analysis: Climate Change - Scenarios and Impacts for Ireland is a timely publication, writes Brendan McWilliams.
The report, commissioned by the Environmental Protection Agency and launched yesterday by the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, Mr Cullen, appears when many of us have begun to wonder if the nemesis of climate change has already overtaken us.
Where will it all end? The report tries to provide the answers as far as Ireland is concerned.
We are all aware that strange things seem to be happening to the world's weather. In southern France, for example, temperatures in June this year were five or six degrees above the long-term average.
Likewise, in Switzerland, last month was the hottest June for 250 years.
Meanwhile in the US, 562 tornadoes were reported during May, a much greater number in a single month than ever experienced before.
The list of anomalies seems endless - not least here in Ireland where, to quote just one example, 2002 in many parts was the wettest year on record by a long way, and also exceptionally warm by the standards we used to think of as the norm.
There is nothing unusual per se about extreme weather events such as these. Meteorological records are broken somewhere in the world every year, even every day.
But scientists are troubled by the fact that the number of such extreme events appears to be increasing. And while there is no conclusive scientific link, it is hard not to surmise a connection between this increasing frequency of extremes and the inexorable rise in global temperature.
And this rise, as we know, has been dramatic.
The average temperature of our planet has increased by more than half a degree Celsius in the last century and a half, and the rate of warming has increased significantly in the last 25 years.
Last year was the second warmest year since instrumental records began; only 1998 was warmer, and is believed to have been the warmest for at least 1,000 years. By and large, these trends have been detected, even apparent, here in Ireland.
The experts, moreover, predict this warming to continue.
The least we can expect, they say, is an increase of 1.5 degrees before 2100; in the worst scenario, with no corrective action to prevent it, the rise in average global temperature could be a catastrophic six degrees, with corresponding rises in the levels of the oceans.
Taking the broad view, so to speak, how will it affect us? Scenarios suggesting that Ireland and Britain will acquire the climate of the south of France are unlikely to be realised except in a very superficial way.
It is tempting to plump for the effect of a simple shift in latitude, but the reality is likely to be much more complex because of Ireland's unique topography, the influence of the ocean to the west, and subtle - or maybe not so subtle - changes in the general circulation of the atmosphere.
These are the issues that Dr John Sweeney and his colleagues have tried to address in Climate Change - Scenarios and Impacts for Ireland. And rightly so, for as the chiefs of the British and US weather services warned in a joint statement some time ago: "Ignoring climate change will surely be the most costly of all possible choices, for us and for our children."
As a nation, we can do little on our own to prevent a change of climate, but we can educate ourselves as to possible eventualities and arm ourselves, as best we can, to cope.
This is not the first such publication to appear in Ireland. A similar selection of studies, Climate Change: Studies on the Implications for Ireland, edited by one Brendan McWilliams, was published by the Department of the Environment in 1991.
But if a week is a long time in politics, a decade nowadays is an eternity in the context of the advancement of scientific knowledge.
We may not as yet fully understand all the complexities of climate change, but the climatic modellers are more confident now than was the case 12 years ago.
The potential impact of global warming in all regions of the world, including Ireland, is much better understood.