Policy Implications of Greenhouse Warming Mitigation, Adaptation, and the Science Base (1992) / Chapter Skim
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32 Issues, Assumptions, and Values
32 Issues, Assumptions, and Values
Pages 515-524
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From page 515... ...
And, if humanity is not changing the climate, we need to know how to cope with natural variations in weather and climate. So, against a background of present climatic differences from place to place and changing weather from day to day, the Adaptation Panel here tries to answer for Congress the final "How can humanity cope with climate change?
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An illustration of a dumb scenario is a vision of the corn varieties and husbandry of 1990 in a changed climate in 2030 and then calculation of the impact of climate change as a change from the 1990 yields. A smarter
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· The net impact of climate change can be negative, or, if the residual change is a help greater than the cost of adaptation, the net can be positive. ASSUMPTIONS Studies of the impacts of climate change commonly begin with a climate scenario.
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So the panel did not have to assume a precise climate scenario, but it did have to assume the sort and order of climate change. The scenarios that are supportable, the forecasts of climate change, and the warnings about the uncertainties of the forecasts were provided by the Effects Panel.
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countries and 3 to 5 percent in Eastern Europe and developing countries during the coming decade and slower thereafter (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 19901. The Adaptation Panel assumed a positive growth of material well-being without specifying it precisely.
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Nevertheless, some recent efforts to compute the variability in the new climate foresee a shift in the average temperature without a change in variability (Mearns et al., 1989, 1990; Rind et al., 1989; Smith and Tirpak, 1989~. A projection of no great change in variability is not inconsistent with the statement by IPCC Working Group I that neither more nor fewer storms could be predicted for the future climate (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 1990~.
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The IPCC stated that business as usual would likely raise the global mean temperature above the present one by about 1°C by 2025 and 3°C before the end of the next century (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 1990~. Furthermore, examining the consequences of, say, a warming of 1°C makes sense even if the eventual warming is greater because the planet would first warm 1°C before warming more.
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Their sensitivity ranged from the potentially severe impact on farms and forests to the negligible impact on mining and manufacturing. The calculated direct impact of climate change on the national income would be about 1 percent (Nordhaus, 19911.
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In The Potential Effects of Global Climate Change on the United States, Appendix I, J
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1989. The Potential Effects of Global Climate Change on the United States.
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