Scientists are increasingly blaming climate change for recent natural disasters such as in the Philippines. They also cite human activity as the cause of climate change as well as the increasing acidification of the oceans, which might in future threaten many crustaceans with extinction.

These problems are bound to get worse, not better, as scientists now feel that the trend for increasing global warming is irreversible.

Reversing global warming would need massive afforestation projects (the reverse is happening in places like Brazil) and a significant reduction of carbon emissions. The discovery and utilisation of massive reserves of natural gas by fracking (pioneered in the US) has lowered global gas prices, and this will lead to the increasing use of gas for electricity generation. Gas emits around half the carbon dioxide that coal and oil emit.

In the long-term however, no significant carbon emissions reduction can be achieved without the large-scale addition of nuclear power to the energy generation mix. The media has demonised nuclear power after the Japanese Fukushima disaster, ignoring the fact that tens of thousands were killed by the tsunami, but not a single person was killed by the nuclear power station meltdown (caused by the mistaken positioning of a nuclear power station too close to a tsunami-prone coast).

Some countries are going ahead with new nuclear power station building programmes while others are shutting down the ones they already have under misguided political pressure. Four top climate scientists recently sent a letter to leading environmental groups and politicians around the world urging a discussion on the role of nuclear power in fighting climate change.

These scientists wrote that “new forms of renewable energy sources cannot scale up fast enough to deliver the amount of cheap and reliable power the world needs, and with the planet warming and carbon dioxide emissions rising faster than ever, we cannot afford to turn away from any technology that has the potential to reduce greenhouse gases”.

The letter was signed by James Hansen, a former top Nasa scientist, Ken Cadeira from the Carnegie Institution, Kerry Emanuel from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Tom Wigley from the University of Adelaide.