New warnings from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change this week should serve as a very loud wake-up call for the world’s policy makers, and for policy makers in each and every individual country.

Releasing extracts from a full report to be published tomorrow, the IPCC’s scientists have upgraded their previous finding, reached back in 2007, that global warming was “very likely a man-made phenomenon” to this week’s upgraded conclusion that it is “extremely likely” that global warming has been induced by humankind.

Put clearly, scientists can now say with extreme confidence that human activity is the dominant cause of the global warming that has been observed since the 1950s.

That means that the next generation and all generations to follow, for that matter, are to face the dire consequences of not only the actions of our predecessors but also of our actions today.

This time the warnings do not emerge from a radical, non-governmental organisation perceived as bent on scaremongering, but rather from the cream of the world’s scientific crop.

And every continent on earth will face the threats being highlighted unless the issue is addressed post-haste.

The symptoms of what lies in store are already there for all to see and experience. Spring has been seen to be occurring earlier, coasts are being slowly eroded and people’s lives across the globe are affected every summer by devastating heat waves.

And while matters are only expected to deteriorate, Malta is by no means exempted from the global warming warning phenomenon. Malta, in fact, faces a number of daunting challenges that will be brought on by rising sea levels, escalating temperatures, drought and coastal erosion in the coming decades.

Granted, warmer temperatures will lead to a somewhat longer spring and summer tourism season, which will of course bring the islands something of a short-term benefit. But as the mercury continues to rise over the years as expected, the spring and summer heat in Malta will become unbearable. 

A future global tourism scenario could, in fact, see holidaymakers travelling to cooler climes for their vacations, turning the current trend on its head and rendering Malta a tourism destination along the lines of what Iceland is today in winter.

Southern Europe as a whole faces multiple threats in the coming decades, should global warming fail to be addressed and stopped in its tracks. Such threats include the predicted ever-rising temperatures leading to drought, a significantly reduced availability of fresh water, plummeting summer tourism numbers and growing health risks related to heat waves and other conditions.

Small islands such as Malta, meanwhile, are particularly vulnerable to rising sea levels and extreme weather events resulting from climate change. Such islands also face deteriorating coastal conditions as beaches erode, while heavy flooding and storm surges are expected to have a similarly devastating effect. Higher temperatures are also expected to bring about an increased invasion of non-native species – wreaking havoc on local ecosystems.

While the IPCC scientists will tomorrow specify how humans are responsible for warming the climate, and that the impacts are already being felt across the world, there is a strong lobby that argues the rising temperatures being recorded and predicted are not human-induced, but are rather a part of the earth’s natural climatic cycle.

Global warming, they argue, has become a big business that has seen multinational corporations as well as SMEs cashing in on what they construe as an artificial, marketing- and media-catalysed commercial phenomenon.

But one must stop and reflect for a moment on one of the 2007 report’s most salient findings, and question the merits of ignoring the warnings irrespective of how remote the possibility of their being realised is.

Scientists found that a seemingly insignificant one degree rise in temperature could place up to 30 per cent of the world’s species at risk of extinction, while a rise of just a few more degrees would entail significant extinctions around the globe.

Such a warning, and the further warnings expected to be published tomorrow, cannot be easily dismissed.