The CO2 concentration has increased by about 20% worldwide since 1958. Due to that the Kyoto Protocol of UNFCCC set legally binding limits on greenhouse gas emissions from 38 industrialised countries.

Already now there are discernible impacts like storms, floods, droughts and heat waves. Those disruption of the natural environment (source of food, raw materials etc.) will eventually affect our economies negatively and could destabilise societies around the globe.

Private and industrial carbon dioxide emissions will cause significant global environmental damage ("global warming") unless action is taken to reduce the level of carbon in the atmosphere.

Over the past 100 years, the Earth's global mean surface temperature has increased by between 0.4° to 0.8° Celsius. The World Meteorological Organization reports that the 10 warmest years in the past 140 have all occurred since 1983. Some of this change may be natural, but over the past 200 years human activity has altered the world's atmosphere, and there is increasing evidence that these atmospheric changes are having an influence on the climate through the enhanced greenhouse effect.

This temperature change may not seem drastic at first glance, however even changes as small as 1 degree Celsius can have a dramatic effect on the Earth as we know it.

The effects of global warming are already in evidence. Global warming may cause regional rain patterns to change, while melting glaciers and the thermal expansions of seawater may raise global sea levels by between 15 and 95 cm by the year 2100.

This image shows the instrumental record of global average temperatures as compiled by the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia and the Hadley Centre of the UK Meteorological Office.

Ref: Bruce C. Douglas (1997). "Global Sea Rise: A Redetermination". Surveys in Geophysics 18: 279-292.