2003 was the hottest summer in Europe since 1500 and according to scientists it was no fluke. The high emissions of greenhouse gasses have made heat waves such as the one in 2003 twice as likely according to a study published in the last issue of 'Nature.'
The temperatures were up by several degrees Celsius--as many as five degrees in Switerland. As a result of the heatwave, approximately 27,000 people across western Europe died.
According to one researcher at Oxford, Myles Allen, it may be possible to hold nations and companies responsible for creating the problem.
'This study suggests a way in which one might be able to link greenhouse gas emissions to actual harm,' Allen told the BBC. 'I'm not suggesting we have done the whole thing yet, to the satisfaction of a judge and jury, but we are showing how a method could be applied in this direction,' he said.
Computer models created by the researchers indicate that greenhouse gasses are a prominant cause of the heat wave and that they make such warm weather twice as likely to occur than they were before the industrial age. According to the study, three quarters of the factors that are causing global warming are due to human influence.
'People have always got lung cancer, before they started smoking,' Allen said, 'but obviously smoking significantly increases the risk of lung cancer; and on those grounds courts have, in a number of jurisdictions, decided that smoking was therefore an effective cause.'
Dr. Peter Stott, another author of the paper, feared that unless something was done to cut greenhouse gas emmissions soon, things will only get worse.
'In fact, our predictions say that if we carry on without serious attempts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, then we could be experiencing a summer like the one we had in 2003 in Europe every other year,' Scott said.
The Kyoto Protocalls were passed in an attempt by world leaders to reduce the emission of harmful greenhouse gasses. The Bush Administration refused to sign the protocalls which renders them meaningless since the United States is by far the largest producer of greenhouse gasses in the world.
