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voting. Apart from the question of de
nitions, the issue of uncertain conceptual
estimates concerning various aspects of the climate problem remains of importance.
In particular, this refers to the main conclusion of the summary of the IPCC reports
(IPCC 2001, 2005, 2007) which claims that:
An increasing body of observa-
tions gives a collective picture of a warming world and most of the observed
warming over the last 50 years is likely to have been due to human activities
“…
.
It is a pity that in the recent (2003) article in the British newspaper The Guardian
the former chairman of the IPCC Working Group 1 Professor J. Houghton
(Houghton 2003; Houghton et al. 2001) compared the threat of anthropogenic
climate changes with weapons of mass destruction, and accused the USA of their
refusal to support the concept of global warming and KP as being the basic cause of
this threat. No matter how paradoxical it may be, such a statement has been made
against a background of an increasing understanding of imperfections in present
global climate models and the absence of their adequate veri
”
cation, which makes
the predictions on the basis of numerical modeling no more than conditional sce-
narios. As for the USA, their huge efforts to support climate studies should be
encouraged. These efforts have a special emphasis on the improvement of the
observing system and on developments in the
field of climate problems in general
(Kondratyev and Krapivin 2001a; McBrean 1998; Randall et al. 2007).
The statement of the Intergovernmental Group G-8 published on 2 July 2003
(G8 2003) has justly emphasized that in the years to come efforts will be con-
centrated on three directions:
(1) co-ordination of global observations strategies;
(2) provision of a pure, more stable and ef
cient application of energy; and
(3) provision of
sustainable
agricultural production and preservation of
biodiversity.
s climate system has indeed changed markedly since the industrial
revolution, with some changes being of anthropogenic origin. The consequences of
climate change do present a serious challenge to the policy-makers responsible for
the environmental policy. This alone makes the acquisition of objective information
on climate change, of its impact and possible responses, most urgent. With this aim
in mind, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the UN Environ-
mental Programme in 1988 organized the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change (IPCC) divided into three working groups (WG) with spheres of respon-
sibility for the:
The Earth
'
(1)
c aspects of climate and its change (WG-I);
(2) effects on and adaptation to climate (WG-II);
(3) analysis of possibilities to limit (mitigate) climate changes (WG-III).
scienti
The IPCC has so far prepared series of detailed reports as well as several special
reports and technical papers (Pachauri and Reisinger 2007; Griggs and Noguer
2002; Alcamo et al. 1994; WMO 2000; Woodcock 1999a, b). The fourth synthesis
IPCC-2007 Report provides integrated view of climate change paying attention to
the following six themes:
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