Climate Change I think that the unusual weather now is due to global warming and subsequent climate change. In the last 50 years in my home city, the average temperature has risen by 1 degree centigrade. Now that sounds very trivial. However, I have not seen a frost here for at least 30 years, but I can remember that we had frosts every winter when I was growing up. In the last 10 years, we have had Asian Geckos establish themselves here. Previously, they could not survive the slightly colder winter. Two effects of those Geckos have been - the barking noise that they make at night, and now there are no spider webs in and around our houses any more. So they have had a dramatic effect on our ecology. Weatherwise, our records indicate that about 140 years ago, we had a singular event when there was a rainfall event of 300 mm of rain falling in an hour. But now, in just the last 3 years, we have had 7 events where there have been recorded rainfall of 300 to 700 mm of rain falling in one hour. The highest was 900 mm of rain. That last one caused a sudden flood that was filmed coming in the open window of a hotel. The water looked like someone had opened the hatch in a submarine. There has been a debate here as to whether our schools should be air-conditioned. This week I listened to an ex-politician who was saying that we don't need this. She stated that when she grew up, her schools was not air-conditioned and she felt that people were too soft. However I thought that the factual 1 degree rise that we had, has also raised our humidity level, and that combined with architectural changes mean that our schoolchildren are exposed to much hotter and humid environments. We know that parts of my city will be submerged or effected by storm surges with sea level rises. Just as happened in New York with Hurrican Sandy. We really need to do something urgently about C02 production and encourage ways to take that C02 out of the atmosphere, like planting forests, promoting energy efficient appliances, and reducing vehicle dependence by urban design and public transport. I wonder what it will take for our politicians to start to deal with this huge problem.