for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change and to lay the foundations for the measures that are ne… - Ann Henderson-Sellers

Our contemporary problem is that human actions since the Industrial Revolution have been changing the composition of the atmosphere the scientific community has been concerned for several decades. By the 1950s it was suggested that the rate of burning fuels such as coal could be changing the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Many of 1988's droughts and floods, heat waves and hurricanes were random events, the roll of the dice. But the dice are being weighted. In coming years they will fall hot and stormy-side uppermost more often. Hard-nosed politicians with voters to cosset, powerful vested interests to satisfy and rivals to guard against began to talk like prophets, ecologists and utopians they began to talk of a world that is frugal and fair.

The awareness of the greenhouse issue is probably greater amongst the general public in Australia than in any other country in the world