Planet Of The Year: Global Warming Feeling the Heat

For more than a decade, many scientists have warned that cars and factories are spewing enough gases into the atmosphere to heat up the earth in a greenhouse effect that could eventually produce disastrous climate changes. But until recently, the prophets of global warming garnered about as much attention as the religious zealots who insist that Armageddon is near. When Colorado Senator Timothy Wirth held congressional hearings on the greenhouse effect in the fall of 1987, the topic generated no heat at all. "We had a very, very distinguished panel," Wirth recalled at the TIME Environment Conference, "and who was in...