| | | | | | |
| CORPORATE |  See http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/syr/ar4_syr.pdf Climate Change 2007: Synthesis Report. An Assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. This report, adopted section by section at IPCC Plenary XXVII (Valencia, Spain, 12-17 November 2007), represents the formally agreed statement of the IPCC concerning key findings and uncertainties contained in the Working Group contributions to the Fourth Assessment Report. Records show that the earth's average surface air temperature has increased by between 0.3-0.6°C over the last century. Scientists of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) now agree that human activities are having a noticeable impact on global climate and anticipate a further increase of 2°C or more by the year 2010. A number of factors affect global climate, such as the earth's orbit around the sun and volcanic and solar activity. The Greenhouse Effect is a natural phenomenon, without which the earth's surface temperature would be about -15°C and life could not be sustained. It works via certain gases in the atmosphere, which create a barrier to the infrared radiation of the sun's rays reflecting from the surface of the earth, the most important one being water vapour (or clouds). It is the addition of manmade global warming gases to the atmosphere that is believed to be causing an increase in average atmospheric temperatures. A decision to reverse this effect was taken at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, when international action was agreed to identify and control the release of man-made greenhouse gases. Even so global GHG emissions due to human activities have grown since pre-industrial times, with an increase of 70% between 1970 and 2004. |