WHILE REPORTS OF ENDANGERED SPECIES, pollutants and toxins in the environment, problematic nuclear and other hazardous wastes, and threats to the biosphere have been highlighted occasionally by the media for many years, recent attention has focused on changes that humans are forcing on the global climate. Indicators of these changes and dire predictions of adverse future effects have been identified periodically by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a collaborative effort of more than a thousand scholars amassed by the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environment Programme to assess the latest scientific, technical, and socioeconomic studies so that well-informed decisions can be made to mitigate these effects
