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1. Seasons Intro

Album Tracks:

1. King of Sunset Town
2. Easter
3. Uninvited Guest
4. Seasons End
5. Holloway Girl
6. Berlin
7. Hooks in You
8. The Space 

B-Sides:

1. After Me
2. The Bell in the Sea
3. The Release

Seasons End - Seasons End

Introduction: Steve Hogarth wrote on Marillion.com: "Words by John [Helmer]. A nostalgic lament about cold English Winters and their loss to global warming. Once you've got your own children you start to think about what kind of a world we're leaving them with... and which of your dearest memories might be impossibilities in the future."

This song was written after the Brazil climate conference of 1998. The following information comes from http://www.enn.com/specialreports/climate/what.asp, Copyright 1997, Environmental News Network, ENN Climate Change Special Report - 1997.

"What is climate change? - John Roach

The climate is always changing and has forever been a hot topic of discussion for park-bench philosophers. We wonder if it will snow tomorrow, or be sunny next week. We wonder if it will be a mild spring, or a wet fall. We wonder about these things because, it seems, there is not much else that we can do. The climate does its thing and we adapt. Its not like humans can actually control the climate, right?

Well, park-bench philosophy has grown up over the last couple hundred years to evolve into the world of meteorological studies, and the meteorologists, with their scientific colleagues, have discovered that we humans are not quite as powerless as we think when it comes to the climate. Human activity has caused the Earth to warm by about one degree Fahrenheit since the late 19th century.

And this one degree has the world up in arms.

A warmer Earth could lead to the spread of diseases such as malaria and dengue. Melting polar ice caps and receding glaciers are leading to a rise in sea levels that could swamp coastal communities. A change in precipitation patterns could lead to widespread flooding in some regions of the world while inflicting drought on others and altering agricultural ecosystems. Though no one is certain of these potential impacts, most scientists, policy makers and economists agree that we can no longer remain idle.

Indeed, delegates from around the world are preparing for a conference on climate change being held in Kyoto, Japan, Dec. 1-10, where more than 170 nations are expected to sign a binding treaty to stop human-induced climate change.

Rhetoric about climate change has moved from park benches to the airwaves, congressional hearings and the void of cyberspace.

What the scientists have learned

The French physicist Jean Fourier argued 170 years ago that the Earth's atmosphere acts like the glass of a greenhouse and correctly identified the process now called the greenhouse effect.

The greenhouse effect is a natural phenomenon. Without it, the Earth would be a much colder place, about 60 degrees colder across the board. Thankfully, the Earth's atmosphere acts like the glass panes of a greenhouse, trapping a portion of the sun's radiant energy and preventing it from escaping back into space.

In a greenhouse, sunlight passes through the canopy of glass panes and warms the ground inside. The heat rising from the ground warms the air and the glass prevents the air from escaping, thus allowing the greenhouse to be a nice and warm place where abundant plant life can flourish.

Like a greenhouse, energy from the sun, which drives the Earth's weather and climate, passes through the atmosphere and warms the surface of the Earth. Heat rising from the surface warms the atmosphere, and like the glass panes of a greenhouse, certain gases in the atmosphere absorb the heat and reflect it back to the ground. The result is life on Earth as we know it, with its lush rainforests, arid deserts, rumbling glaciers and concrete jungles.

The Earth and its atmosphere act like one giant greenhouse. They have done so for millions of years and are expected to continue for millions more.

Data collected by Oak Ridge National Laboratory and published in "Trends '93: A Compendium of Data on Global Change" shows an overall increase in global carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels. (Graph courtesy of World Resources Institute)

Why all the fuss?

The problem, as first identified by the Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius in 1896, is that human activities, like driving our cars, burning coal to heat our homes and run our factories, chopping down forests to build our cities and produce our paper, and raising cattle to fill our bellies have significantly increased the atmospheric concentrations of key greenhouse gases, namely carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide. This increase in greenhouse gases is thought to enhance the greenhouse effect and lead to global warming.

In fact, the EPA reports that since the beginning of the industrial revolution atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide have increased almost 30 percent, methane concentrations have more than doubled and nitrous oxide concentrations have risen by 15 percent. Scientists generally agree that these human-induced, heat-trapping gases hovering over the Earth are to blame for the 0.5-1 degree Fahrenheit rise in average surface temperatures since the late 19th century. Most scientists also agree that if nothing is done to curb the emissions of human-induced greenhouse gases then the concentrations of these gases will continue to build. One EPA model shows increased carbon dioxide concentrations of 30 to 150 percent by the year 2100, contributing to a further rise in global temperatures of about five degrees.

Since the late 19th century, EPA reports that global mean surface temperatures have risen 0.6-1.2 degrees F with the nine warmest years in the last century all occurring in the last 14 years. The warmest on record was 1995. There has been a noted decrease in snow cover in the Northern Hemisphere and floating ice in the Arctic Ocean. Global sea levels have risen 4-10 inches and precipitation over landfall has increased by 0.1 percent.

The global impacts of this human-induced climate change are subject to much debate. Doom-sayers predict that increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases are likely to accelerate the rate of climate change. They say the polar ice caps will melt, causing sea levels to rise by a foot and swamping coastal communities. Increased precipitation due to higher rates of evaporation may produce stronger and more frequent storms. The same increased evaporation could suck the land dry in other regions of the world causing widespread drought and famine. Warmer temperatures could lead to increased health risks, including the spread of diseases such as malaria and dengue and an increased frequency of heat-related illness and death.

On the other hand, sceptics look at the geological records and point out that the Earth has gone through great fluctuations in climate variability -- including ice ages. Dr. S. Fred Singer, former director of the U.S. Weather Satellite Service and current president of the Science & Environmental Policy Project, recently cited scientific evidence from ocean sediment cores dating back 3,000 years that indicate rapid and repeated changes in sea surface temperatures by as much as 5 degrees F in just a few decades.

Therefore the short term measurements of slightly warmer temperatures suggest little to no systematic change if natural variability is taken into account.

Even the doom-sayers admit that the potential impacts of a warming climate are difficult to predict and cannot be reliably projected for specific areas.

Throw the subject of the global economy in the climate change debate and no wonder everyone is talking. To reduce human emissions of greenhouse gases means altering the very way we function from day to day. While some economic forecasters see this as an opportunity to boost the economy through the implementation of new technologies, others see it costing billions of dollars through taxes and the loss of thousands of jobs at the closure of polluting industries.

So while there is general scientific consensus on the existence and process of global warming, the debate from both an environmental and economic perspective will likely rage well after the ink is dry on any climate treaty signed this December in Kyoto."