The World Is Getting Warmer -- But Here's What We Can Do Now to Prepare

This is the second installment of a five-part WorldPost series on the world beyond 2050. The series is adapted from the Nierenberg Prize Lecture by Lord Martin Rees in La Jolla, Calif. Part one is available here. Part three will be published next week. The world will gradually get warmer. In contrast to population issues -- the subject of last week's "Beyond 2050" essay -- climate change is certainly not under-discussed. But it's still unclear how much the warming due to carbon dioxide itself is amplified by associated changes in water vapor and clouds. The fifth Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report presents a spread of projections. But despite the uncertainty, there are two messages that most scientists would agree on: 1. Regional disruptions to weather patterns within the next 20-30 years will aggravate pressures on food and water and engender migration. 2. Under a "business as usual" scenario we can't rule out really catastrophic warming arriving later in the century and tipping points triggering catastrophes -- like the melting of Greenland's icecap. But even those who accept both these statements have widely diverse views on the policy responses. And I don't think it's fully appreciated that these divergences stem less from differences about the science than from differences in economics and ethics -- in particular, in how much obligation we should feel towards future generations. Economists who apply a standard discount rate, a method for calcul...
Source: Science - The Huffington Post - Category: Science Source Type: news