Overview

Over one hundred years ago, Nobel prize chemist Svante Arrhenius predicted global warming as a consequence of the Industrial Revolution. Increased levels of carbon dioxide from fossil fuel burning, he speculated, would trap more of the sun's heat inside the Earth's atmosphere.

No one paid any serious attention to his claim.

It was not until the late 1980s that scientists and environmentalists began to call attention to the fact that human beings are changing the composition of the Earth's atmosphere, and, as a consequence, are changing global climate - with unknown but potentially dire consequences.

And it was not until the turn of the twenty-first century that the dust of controversy began to settle. Today, the scientists charged to assess the evidence for human-driven climate change (more popularly known as "global warming") consider the evidence to be convincing: climate change is no longer regarded as a hypothesis, but as reality.

2005 was the planet's warmest year on record. 1998, 2002, 2003, and 2004 were the next four in the running.

It is impossible to predict the exact repercussions of climate change - or when, where, and how these will be experienced. But predictions are troublesome, and call for shifting to clean energy sources and even curbing overproduction and over-consumption.

Scientists anticipate that the world is going to become a hotter place. Weather is likely to be more violent and less predictable. Some places will see increased precipitation and flooding, while other places will experience more intense droughts. Glaciers and ice sheets will melt - indeed are melting - and sea levels are expected to rise.

Human communities and nations the world over are going to be affected by climate change in small and momentous ways. Entire ecosystems and species are also threatened with destruction and extinction.

Join us on Thursday November 2nd , when a panel of experts will discuss and debate issues surrounding climate change in our Choices and Challenges forum.