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The Rhodesia Herald, 12 February 1979
EXPERTS from around the world gather here today to decide what our planet’s climate is doing and what should be done about it.
This world climate conference organised by the World Meteorological Organisation and officially described “A conference of experts on climate and mankind”, hopes to draw up a plan of action for dealing with extremes in weather patterns.
It is a response “to the growing worldwide concerns about the impacts of natural variations in climate upon world food production, energy supply and demand, water resources, land use and other aspects of society,” said a WMO spokesman.
“It is also a response to the ominous indications that man, through his own activities, may cause sufficient changes in climate.”
In the experts’ minds during the two-week meeting will be the recent hard winters in the Northern Hemisphere and their effects upon economies, the European drought of 1976, the off-and-on Sahel drought, India’s floods last year and other such “anomalies.”
The conference chairman Dr Robert White of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences notes in his keynote address: “Similar events have occurred frequently in the historical record. What is new is the realisation that vulnerability of human society to climatic events has not disappeared with technological development.”
The delegates will also be considering the effects of such human practices as burning carbon fuel (which by releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere might create a solar “greenhouse effect” and warm the world), cutting down forests and releasing large amounts of aerosol sprays into the international obligations must be derived.”
Online Reporter