In June 2007, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change published the three-part UN Climate Report, on which around 2,500 researchers from 124 countries had worked for years. It is based on around 40 computer simulations. For the first time, it was agreed that humans are to blame for climate change. The highly developed countries are responsible for heating up the atmosphere (global warming) and "exporting" the effects. The main causes are rapid population growth, increasing consumption of fossil fuels, deforestation and urbanisation.
The relentless burning of fossil fuels such as petrol, oil or coal produces huge quantities of additional carbon dioxide, which causes the greenhouse effect. It is contained in the earth's atmosphere as a trace gas with a volume share of around 0.038%. This apparently extremely small proportion is used by sceptics as an argument that the (human) contribution in the air is so small that it does not affect the climate. It is wrongly assumed that a small amount has only a small effect.
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