The Weather Machine (1974)

1974 has been a bad year for weather, with disastrous floods and droughts, a failed monsoon in India, unprecedented tornadoes in America, a dismal summer and unseasonable gales in Europe. The machine that makes the world's weather is changing gear - and the shift is downward, against mankind. The smallest change means loss of life in flood or drought, and the wholesale destruction of crops. For us, the price of food goes up; for millions more, it brings hunger or starvation. In the background looms the threat of ice, and the obliteration of northern lands - including Britain. The next ice-age is already overdue. The trends are revealed in cores drilled from deep beneath the Greenland ice-cap; by instruments high on a volcano in Hawaii, acting as a breathalyzer for our planet; by ships that probe the depths of the sea for clues to the weather of 18,000 years ago; and by satellites that look down from space to encompass the storms of half a world. In the Pacific and Atlantic oceans we see the beginnings of a concerted global assault on the problems of our ever-changing climate. Perhaps just in time, the nations are uniting in the war against bad weather.