Climate Change
There is wide agreement among climate researchers today that our emissions of greenhouse gases are affecting the Earth's radiation balance. It will get warmer, but there is still some uncertainty about how big the effect will be.

For several reasons it is difficult to determine a precise level of greenhouse gases that nature can "cope with". It is also uncertain how the climate system will react to the emissions, and we still know relatively little about how nature is affected when the climate changes.

Whatever the case it is apparent that to avoid negative effects to humans and ecosystems all over the world the emissions of greenhouse gases must start to decline very soon. There is wide agreement that global mean temperature should not increase more than 2°C over the preindustrial level.

To meet that target with a reasonable degree of confidence, global emissions of greenhouse gases in 2050 must be 50-85 per cent below the 1990 level, according to the 2007 assessment report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

In this section (see left hand column) you can learn more about expected effects, emissions of greenhouse gases, possible ways of reducing them, and political developments. Find what you can also do at a personal level to help reduce emissions!

Last modified: 20 July 2007.