So what can we expect in the next few years? Both sides have very different forecasts. The Met Office says that warming is set to resume quickly and strongly. It predicts that from 2010 to 2015 at least half the years will be hotter than the current hottest year on record (1998). Sceptics disagree. They insist it is unlikely that temperatures will reach the dizzy heights of 1998 until 2030 at the earliest. It is possible, they say, that because of ocean and solar cycles a period of global cooling is more likely. One thing is for sure. It seems the debate about what is causing global warming is far from over. Indeed some would say it is hotting up.

This page shows a selection of the locations where we have documented glacier and ice cap retreat -- a small set of images illustrating the overwhelming evidence from hundreds of glaciers and ice caps on every continent that global warming is severely affecting the water and glacial cycles of the planet. This is a profound change that unlike natural cycles like the Little Ice Age of the 16th and 17th centuries is proceeding very rapidly and appears tied to no natural cycles.

Geophysicist Tom Osterkamp indicates ground level when he installed this temperature probe pipe near Denali Park, 15 years ago. Alaska permafrost temperature has increased 0.5° to 1.5° C since 1980, when Osterkamp began measuring ground temperature at 30 sites.