Scientists who have been warning of global warming have been accused of crying that the sky is falling, mostly by so-called scientists who curry favor with friends of the fossil fuel industries. Oceanographers, climatologists and ecologists have predicted profound global environmental and ecological changes are likely to occur should ocean temperatures rise just a few degrees. They watch, measure, warn and wait.

But the waiting may be over off the coast of Britain where water temperatures in the North Sea have risen 2ºC in the past 20 years. In stories on the UK's news.independent.co.uk website, British scientists report a near total breeding failure of several seabird species in the Orkney and Shetland Islands, whose sea cliffs are breeding habitat for tens of thousands of pairs. In the Shetlands, guillemots this summer have produced almost no young. Over 6,000 pairs of great skuas produced fewer than 10 chicks and over 1,000 Arctic skua pairs produced no surviving young. The Shetland area manager for the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) reported that the 24,000 pairs of Arctic terns and 16,700 pairs of kittiwakes have "probably suffered complete failure." Data on puffins was not yet in because they nest in burrows and the young do not fledge until August.

A similar disaster has hit England's Bempton Cliffs on the Yorkshire coast, where 200,000 seabirds nest. Observers report that the colony of 45,000 kittiwakes, the gull-like species used by the UK government as an indicator of marine health, had its worst breeding season ever.

What is the cause of this sudden and unprecedented catastrophe? The scientists are pointing with certainty to ocean warming. The sandeel, a key part of the marine food chain that in the past has drifted about the northern waters in huge shoals, has disappeared and ultimately has led to starvation for the birds. The cold-loving plankton, on which the sandeel larvae feed, are moving northward as the water warms. The sandeels are starving and, thus, the larger fish are being affected as are the birds at the top of the food web. Though harvest has caused some depletion, evidence does not point to over-fishing of sandeels as the cause of the population crash.

Scientists believe the entire North Sea ecosystem is undergoing a fundamental alteration in the interaction of its component species. One RSPB scientist states it graphically. He refers to the North Sea as an engine and the plankton as the fuel driving it. "The fuel mix has changed so radically in the past 20 years, as a result of climate change, that the whole engine is now spluttering and starting to malfunction." Tony Juniper, director of Friends of the Earth, said the catastrophe shows that climate change is happening now and that reducing the pollution causing changes to the earth's climate should now be the global number one political priority.

Fortunately, the affected seabird species have breeding populations elsewhere, such as the west coasts of Britain and Ireland, Iceland and the Faroe Islands. Let's hope our government and others accept the reality of global warming and its causes in time to prevent further ecological disaster.