Environment in 2006

The World Wakes Up To Global Warming
We started the year with starvation in the Horn of Africa and many deaths in Europe’s big freeze. The temperature hit a 50 year low in many parts. The strain on energy supplies was enormous. This, and the huge fears that we are overly dependent on unstable countries for oil and on Russia for gas, led people to start exploring the nuclear option again, even as we marked the twentieth anniversary of the Chernobyl meltdown.
In March the global warming warnings increased in detail and intensity. In April oil prices rose to historic highs, a pattern that held for six months. By May we were groaning under very poor weather, with farmers under massive pressure from waterlogged pasture, empty stores and rising fuel prices. By July all was forgotten again, as we notched temperature peaks of over 30°.
What does it all mean? Where is it all going?
Well, in October a report by Sir Nicholas Stern, commissioned by UK Chancellor, was released. In this he estimates that global warming will cost the world up to £3.68 trillion unless action is taken immediately…
Stern issued a warning that a successor to Kyoto must be signed or the world will face absolute catastrophe. He, and many others, said we have between ten and fifteen years, no more to tackle the problem. Unless we do, it’s Armageddon, with little chance of rapture.
Well, the climate summit in November ended with agreement on a climate change plan. Sure, now all we have to do is implement it.
The Bogmen Cometh
Last January the remarkable remains of Cloneycavan Man and Old Croghan Man were found in bog on the boundaries of ancient local kingdoms. Both had been brutally murdered or ritually executed during the last two millennia.
They were amazing in themselves, as thousands can attest, having seen them in the National Museum in Dublin. The detail was incredible. One of them, clearly a forebear of either Donie Cassidy or Podge and Rodge, and possibly of all three, still had his rough, quiffed red hair in which were found residues of a gel, based on tree resin, that was traced to France! Quiff – coif! Plus ca change!
In addition, experts in facial reconstruction had a go at what they looked like when alive and the results were fantastic…
In July the bogs yielded another secret when an ancient manuscript was found in the midlands – a psalter or Book of Psalms. It was in pretty good nick when uncovered by a bulldozer. And fortunately the man who found it and those on whose land he was working knew exactly what to do to preserve it.
Days later a kerfuffle broke out after the museum said that one of the psalms in the book was psalm 83. Newspapers reported this and, as is the way of things, people looked up the psalm and found that 83 had a reference to ‘wiping Israel off the map’. Since war was ongoing in the Lebanon, the internet went crazy and apocalyptics wet their trousers.
The museum was in like Flynn to dampen down the hysteria. In fact, it’s a different psalm 83. Dull it might be, but in the old Latin translation the numbers are different…