United Kingdom

THE UNITED KINGDOM of Great Britain and Northern Ireland has a land area of 94,526 sq. mi. (244,100 sq. km.), with a population of 60,587,300 (July 2006) and a population density of 637 people per sq. mi. (246 people per sq. km.). London, the capital and the 16th largest city in the world, has a population density of 11,927 per sq. mi. (4,597 per sq. km.). Some 25 percent of the land of the United Kingdom is devoted to agriculture, with a further 46 percent used for meadow or pasture, and 10 percent of the land being forested.

Traditionally, most of the electricity generation in the United Kingdom has come from coal, which has been mined in parts of Scotland, Yorkshire, Nottinghamshire, and South Wales. The continued use of coal, and also of oil, Britain having made use of the North Sea oil fields since the 1970s, has meant that 73.2 percent of Britain's electricity generation was, in 2001, still coming from fossil fuels—coal, oil, and natural gas—with 23 percent coming from nuclear fuel and only 1.5 percent from hydropower. Although recent governments have tried to use nuclear power more extensively, this move has been widely opposed by many people, who are concerned about the safety of nuclear power, with political pressure over the location of the various nuclear power stations.

The United Kingdom ranks 37th in terms of its carbon dioxide emissions per capita, with 10.0 metric tons in 1990, falling steadily to 9.2 metric tons by 1998, and then rising to 9.79 metric tons by 2004. A third of all carbon dioxide emissions in the country are from the generation of electricity, with 27 percent from transportation, through heavy use of private automobiles, and large traffic jams and tailbacks in London and many other major cities, some 17 percent [Page 998]generated for residential use, and 15 percent from manufacturing and construction. In terms of the source of these emissions, 27 percent is from solid fuels, with 36 percent from liquid fuels and 35 percent from gaseous fuels, and 1 percent from gas flaring.

There have been many effects on Britain of global warming and climate change. Because statistics have been collected there since the 18th century, it has been easier to study the changes. The number of cold days has steadily decreased, with an average of 4 days per year above 68 degrees F (20 degrees C) for most of the period since 1772, but 26 days above 68 degrees F (20 degrees C) in 1995. Indeed, October 2001 was the warmest October in central England, with four of the five warmest years in the previous three and a half centuries being in the 1990s and early 2000s. One study has shown that oak trees have experienced earlier leafing as the climate gets warmer.

As well as rises in temperature, there have also been widespread floods, with that in October and November 2000 resulting in the flooding of some 10,000 houses at a cost of about $1.5 billion. This was the worst flooding in Britain since those in March to June of 1947, with the melting of a six-week snowpack, although some war damage to locks on canals leading into the River Thames made the floods worse than normal. Since then, there had been floods in 1968, 1993, and 1998, with those in 2000 following the wettest autumn since records were first collected in the late 1660s. Although floods have not been unknown in Britain—and the River Thames flooded again in 2003 and 2006—in June and July 2007 there were much more serious floods. These caused damage estimated at $3 billion, with Northern Ireland experiencing floods on June 12 and East Yorkshire and the Midlands being hit three days later.

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