ABSTRACT
The succession of exceptional years with record high temperatures, which characterized the 1980s, helped to generate widespread popular interest in global warming and its many ramifications. The decade included six of the warmest years in the past century, and the trend continued into the 1990s, with 1991 the second warmest year on record. All of this fuelled speculation-especially among the media-that the earth’s temperature had begun an inexorable rise, and the idea was further reinforced by the results of scientific studies which indicated that global mean temperatures had risen by about
0.5°C since the beginning of the century (see Figure 7.1).
