[Alarmist Salinger: We've known about the greenhouse effect for over 100 years, but we didn't consider it in 1981] | Stuff.co.nz

"When my PhD thesis was done in 1981, I wanted to work out what was happening with New Zealand climate, particularly temperatures. In those times, we weren't considering `the greenhouse effect', and I thought `this is an interesting topic, see if New Zealand's climate has changed'," Salinger says. 
"... Now, they're very effective greenhouse gases, and the theory was developed well more than 100 years ago – if you double your greenhouse gases, temperatures go up..."

AAAS Delta Force « Watts Up With That?

In 2009 President Obama provided some examples of what these challenges might be:
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* Solar cells as cheap as paint, and green buildings that produce all of the energy they consume.

South Africa: SA Could Yet Witness Global Climate Change Deal

Andrew Gilder, an attorney at Johannesburg legal consultancy Imbewu, described the accord as a "moving target" and said it could threaten the future of the Kyoto Protocol, which currently governs international climate commitments.
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He said even SA, which had helped draft the accord, seemed to dodge the question of whether it associated with the accord, arguing that it had already subscribed to it by helping to write it.