Climate:The phased release from February to November in Paris, Brussels, Bangkok and Valencia of the four volumes that constitute the latest scientific evidence on global warming made everyone sit up and take notice.
The Fourth Assessment by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) described the evidence as "unequivocal" and warned that the world is heading into a dangerous future unless we start making deep cuts in global greenhouse gas emissions.
This is now beginning to drive the political process of finding solutions. Certainly, the 13th UN Climate Change Conference in Bali earlier this month was dominated by a widespread realisation that every country would have to face up to the problem of global warming.
The US, which is responsible for just over 20 per cent of emissions worldwide, successfully resisted the inclusion in the "Bali Roadmap" of a target range of cuts, arguing that this would "prejudge" the outcome of the next round of negotiations, which are due to finish in 2009.
As Friends of the Earth director Tony Juniper said: "The US are behaving like first-class passengers on a jumbo jet who believe an emergency in economy class does not affect them. But if we go down, we go down together, and the US needs to realise that very quickly."
After coming under sustained attack at the final plenary session, US delegation chief Paula Dobriansky relented, saying it would "join the consensus today".
Within hours, however, the White House was expressing "serious concerns" about aspects of the Bali Roadmap.
Essentially, what the Bush administration wants is a deal that would impose binding commitments on major developing countries such as China and India - even though their per capita emissions are still fractions of what the US pumps into the atmosphere every year.
According to the International Energy Agency, global demand for energy will double over the next 25 years. In Europe alone, it has been estimated that some 200,000 megawatts of electricity generating capacity will have to be replaced by 2020 - but with what?
If the use of coal is to continue, particularly in China, it will have to be cleaned up - otherwise carbon dioxide emissions will spiral upwards. Hence the urgend need, as the Wall Street Journal said recently, for major investment in research and development into alternatives. What's needed, scientists argue, is a commitment on a par with the Manhattan Project that produced the first atomic bomb.
Whether it will be possible for the UN process to produce an agreement in two years' time on how to proceed is an open question.
But with a new occupant in the White House by then, with a more engaged approach, the chances must be rated as reasonably good.