ABSTRACT
The prospect of a planet, intricately and marvellously attuned to almost any calamity, being stressed by the hand of humans in the twinkling of an evolutionary eye, became a high level political issue in many countries in the late 1980s. Climate change science is essentially the product of an amazing period of interdisciplinary networking and modelling by international groups of scientists working imaginatively and creatively over a period of approximately 20 years. For more than a hundred years scientists have been considering the possibility that human activities may change the earth’s climate. Over the past 20 years concern has concentrated on the fact that the concentrations of certain gases in the atmosphere are increasing and that this may lead to a warming of the earth’s surface and to climatic changes. The basis of this concern is the enhanced greenhouse effect. A culmination of scientific development in climate change analysis is the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
