After an especially good week of warmth and sunshine right in the middle of the holiday season it is not surprising that the weather should have become a prime topic of conversation.
This weekend promises well for a great variety of outdoor events. Irish people who have gone on holiday in Europe have encountered the unprecedented heat for themselves.
Reports of extreme weather events around the world have reinforced the impression that this is more than a simple heatwave. More and more the focus turns to wider questions about whether we are living through a period of climate change due to human agency rather than natural processes. The undeniable consensus among the world's leading climatologists on the United Nations inter-governmental panel on climate change (IPCC) is that global warming is well under way and that precautionary measures must be taken to counter and reverse it. They disagree on predictions or scenarios about the likely increases in average world temperature to be expected this century, but acknowledge they could range from 1.6 to 6 degrees centigrade. The 20th century is reckoned to have been the hottest for 1,000 years - and saw temperatures increase dramatically in the 1980s and 1990s. 2003 may turn out to be the warmest year ever experienced.
These may seem like small changes to the untutored eye. But those who say so should take full account of Brendan McWilliams's opinion in this newspaper on Wednesday: "Recent experience provides hints that even the lower of these figures might bring with it extreme weather events of a kind and severity outside our experience at present." A recent conference of leading atmospheric scientists in Berlin concluded that the IPCC's models may have understated the upper estimates, which should range between 7 and 10 degrees centigrade. This, they say, would severely affect food and water supplies, traumatise most economies and fundamentally change everyday life.
Prophets of disaster are all too often disbelieved. In assessing these scenarios all due allowance should be made for the qualifications and cautions attached to them. But it would be foolhardy indeed not to remind those who are talking about the marvellous spell of weather this weekend that it may herald a darker future. It falls to citizens, politicians and governments here and around the world to deal with them. The immediate priority should be to secure and implement the Kyoto Protocol, which is designed to deal with global warming, however partially and unsatisfactorily.