Introduction

In 1995, more than two thousand scientists from one hundred countries reported to the United Nations that our burning of oil, coal, and natural gas is changing the earth’s climate. Nearly a decade later, many of the same researchers are very troubled by two things: The climate is changing much more quickly than they projected even a few years ago, and the systems of the planet are far more sensitive to even a very small degree of warming than they had realized. The average global temperature, the report said, will rise by 3 to 10° F by the end of the twenty-first century.