On the 16th of February 2005 the Kyoto Protocol came into force. This protocol represents the culmination of a process that can be traced back to 1896 when Svante Arrhenius first proposed that increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide could lead to a warming of the climate. His book, Worlds in the Making, is the first to describe the ‘hothouse effect’ and looked forwards to an expected doubling of atmospheric CO2 over the next 3000 years causing a pleasant 10°F rise in temperature.

This rather rosy outlook was to change significantly over the next 100 years as first scientists, and then policy makers began to better understand the workings of the global climate. Arrhenius believed that the climate would change for the better with a doubling of atmospheric CO2 over a period of 3000 years. 100 years of subsequent research has shown that the doubling of atmospheric CO2 is likely to take only 250 years, but that the increase of 10°F is still possible.

The earth’s climate is a highly complex entity, and scientists have not yet proven their ability to model it precisely let alone accurately predict the future. Despite this problem, the general scientific consensus reached by the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the worlds’ peak scientific body on climate change science, is that the available evidence supports the theory that the climate is warming, and that this is caused by greenhouse gas emissions.