The earth’s atmosphere has warmed, and it seems that the great 100,000-year experiment of human progress is about to be tested against rising sea levels, melting ice caps, droughts, storms, famines, pandemics and floods. Human activity is causing much of this change, especially by the burning of fossil fuels, whose energy has been responsible for raising the living standards of many of the world’s nearly seven billion people, so humankind faces a stark dilemma in the coming century between continuing a carbon-fuelled prosperity until global warming brings it to a calamitous halt, or
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