ABSTRACT

This chapter discusses the evolution of concern about climate change and how this concern eventually reached the Bulgarian academic community. The constant is Bulgaria as a geographic locale and society; the variables are from the real, experienced drought of the 1990s versus future climate. Although the threat of climate change due to human emissions of greenhouse gases emerged as an important scientific and public policy issue in the 1970s, the roots of human understanding of greenhouse warming are nearly two centuries old. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was instituted in 1988 as a consensus voice of the global scientific community on climate change issues. In 1974, Russian scientist Budyko was among the first scholars to focus on the potential of a comparatively quick change of climate caused by human economic development. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.