Gerald Marsh - The purpose of this critique is to help the reader determine whether our understanding of the earth’s climate is adequate to predict the long-term effects of carbon dioxide emissions from the continued burning of fossil fuels, to permit informed public policy decisions.

Climate Change 2001: The Scientific Basis, the Contribution of Working Group I to the Third Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the volume is remarkable for many reasons, not least of which is that it has essentially eliminated the Medieval Warm Period of the 11th to 14th centuries and the Little Ice age of the 17th to 19th centuries.