The unprecedented prospect of human-induced (rapid) changes to the global climate has prompted a large international scientific effort to assess the evidence. The IPCC, established within the UN framework in 1988, was charged with advis- ing national governments on the causes and processes of climate change; likely impacts and their associated costs; and ways to lessen the impacts. The IPCC’s Third Assessment Report (2001) projects an increase in average world surface temperature ranging from to °C over the course of the twenty-first century (see Figure ). That estimation, with its wide range, is drawn from a large number of different global climate models and a range of.
