October 2001
August 2001		December 2001

Hot websites

International negotiations and agreements on combating global warming are conducted under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. Its website (http://www.unfccc.int/) offers official documents from all sessions since COP 1 in 1995 and in all languages, including the texts of the Convention itself and the Kyoto Protocol. You can check how well each country is doing in meeting its commitments by consulting the 'greenhouse gas inventory' database. There is also a 'media room' with press releases and video broadcasts from previous sessions.

The best source of objective scientific information on global warming is the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (http://www.ipcc.ch/). Its role is to "assess the scientific, technical and socio-economic information relevant for the understanding of the risk of human-induced climate change." The site contains many downloadable documents including summaries of the IPCC assessment reports, the third of which (published this year) is the definitive statement of our present understanding of the state of the world's climate. The two IPCC sponsors, the UN Environment Programme (http://www.unep.org/) and the World Meteorological Organization (http://www.wmo.ch/) also have useful websites.

International negotiations are arcane and complex. A good source for keeping up to date with progress is the Linkages website (http://www.iisd.ca/) hosted by the International Institute for Sustainable Development. Described as an "electronic clearing-house for information on past and upcoming international meetings related to environment and development policy", this large site is packed with information about numerous environmental issues. Recent climate change meetings are reported in the Earth Negotiations Bulletin, which contains day-by-day accounts of proceedings detailed enough to satisfy the most insatiable negotiations-watcher.

The EU's own environment programme site (http://europa.eu.int/comm/environment) contains detail's of the EU's activities to tackle climate change as well as many other environmental issues.

The US Environmental Protection Agency has a large and comprehensive site devoted to global warming (http://www.epa.gov/globalwarming/) which also introduces the US global change research programme, a major contributor to the IPCC. Among the many facilities is a calculator to let you estimate your own personal contribution to global warming.