We included some of the short forms used in the book in the glossary, but for convenience, here are all the acronyms and what they stand for.

UNIPCC - United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

-- also called the IPCC

UNFCCC - United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change

UNCED - United Nations Confrence on the Environment and Development

COP1-10 - Conference of the Parties (to the UNFCCC)

PUN - the Panel of the UN (i.e. the UNIPCC), referring to Working Group 1, the scientific panel.

The Big Panel - another name for the PUN

The Little Panel -  The PUN's working group II, on "impacts" of climate change

SPAM - the Summary for Policy Makers and Media, a little executive summary attached to the Big Panel report

The ARs - Assessment Reports, The Big Panel's Big Reports produced every 5 years

TAR - Third Assessment Report

AR4 - Fourth Assessment Report

ELGs - Environmental Lobby Groups, sometimes called "NGO"s or Non-Governmental Organizations

WWF - World Wildlife Fund

MIT - Massachusetts Institute of Technology

NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration (US)

EDF - Environmental Defence Fund

CCAF - Climate Change Action Fund

BP - British Petroleum

CBC - Canadian Broadcasting Corporation

ECM - Enchanted Computing Machine

GCM - General Circulation Model

T-Rex - Any one of a family of statistics commonly called "Global Temperature" which shows the output of a process of averaging temperature data

Bleeps - units of T-Rex

GHCN - Global Historical Climatology Network

GWP - Global Warming Potential