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Policy Implications of Greenhouse Warming Mitigation, Adaptation, and the Science Base (1992) / Chapter Skim
Currently Skimming:

Individual Statement by a Member Of The Synthesis Panel
Pages 84-86

The Chapter Skim interface presents what we've algorithmically identified as the most significant single chunk of text within every page in the chapter.
Select key terms on the right to highlight them within pages of the chapter.


From page 84...
... If the change is unprecedented in the experience of the human species, how can it be claimed that people will have no more difficulty adapting to future changes than to those of the past? "The reasoning used here is that human economic activities are largely divorced from nature and that modern technology effectively buffers us from climate.
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From page 85...
... This will probably not be the case during a greenhouse warming, because of the difficulties of forecasting regional impacts, the rate of expected change, and because we may be operating under conditions with which mankind has no past experience. "Finally, it may be strictly accurate that 'pluses and minuses' will combine to produce 'small net change for a nation of our size.' But the distribution of impacts in time and space matters more than this treatment suggests.
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Key Terms

  • climatic changes
  • economic activities
  • sanguine outlook
  • range people
  • including human

  • national costs
  • dollar economy
  • expected change
  • modern technology
  • human suffering

  • deceptively manageable
  • resulting impacts
  • unduly sanguine
  • human economic
  • multitrillion dollar

  • viewed solely
  • appear deceptively
  • move usually
  • regional impacts
  • olympian perspective

  • technology effectively
  • usually learn
  • severe ecosystem
  • considered separately
  • past experience

  • forecasting regional
  • indisputably enormous
  • effectively buffers
  • gradual change
  • ecosystem disruption


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