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Hello and happy new year to a new time.

Last year the weather gave our planet a terrible beating.

At least 16,000 people lost their lives as a result of storms.

15 million were left homeless and about 10,000 died when the world's worst

cyclone swept across eastern India. Hurricane Floyd hit the United States, Typhoon

Bart hit Japan, Typhoon York,

hit Hong Kong and Macau, even Western Europe was hurricaneed a few weeks ago.

The climate it can be made to seem is on the rampage.

So are the effects of global warming that we've heard about already upon us?

And if so, how can we really hope to stop them?

With me to discuss what could we call the new climate of fear at the beginning of a new century

is Sir John Horton, co-Chair of the United Nations Global Warming

Science Committee, the International Governmental Panel on Climate Change, and the Environmentalist

George Mombio Guardian journalist and visiting professor at the Department of Philosophy

at Bristol University.

George Mombio, can you give us a, mombio, can you give us an overview of what you see happening with the climate in this next hundred years or so.

This could be the most serious problem which civilization, which life on Earth faces over

the next century. We're seeing two potential sets of effects.

The first would be progressive and largely predictable change with, for instance, the drier parts of the world becoming drier still some of the

wetter parts of the world becoming wetter still with potentially devastating consequences

...