The Discovery of Global Warming

At the beginning of the twentieth century the prospect of “global warming” as a result of human activities was thought to be far off, and in any case, likely to be beneficial. As we begin the twenty‐first century science adviser to the British government, Sir David King, has said that he considers global warming to be the world's most important problem, including terrorism. Yet, dealing with it has become the subject of a contentious international protocol, numerous conferences of international diplomats, and major scientific assessments and research programs. Spencer Weart, who is director of the Center for History of Physics of the American Institute of Physics, has taken on the challenge of explaining how this came to be. In the tradition of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which was established in 1988 to evaluate and assess the state of global warming science, this book is roughly equivalent to the Technical Summary, in terms of its technical level, being quite readable, but with substantive content about the main lines of evidence. Underpinning this relatively concise presentation, there is a well—developed—and still developing—Web site that, like the detailed chapters of the full IPCC assessment reports, provides vastly more information and linkages to a much wider set of reference materials (see http://www.aip.org/history/climate).