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Global warming
Author(s) -
Moore Thomas Gale
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
embo reports
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 4.584
H-Index - 184
eISSN - 1469-3178
pISSN - 1469-221X
DOI - 10.1038/embor.2008.53
Subject(s) - global warming , blame , climate change , institution , political science , environmental ethics , sociology , law , psychology , philosophy , ecology , psychiatry , biology
Global climate change has been portrayed largely as an unmitigated catastrophe for humans and the environment but, in reality, the topic is more nuanced. Although scientists agree that the climate is changing and many accept that anthropogenic increases in CO2 are to blame, there is actually both good and bad news about global warming—and some ugly news about abatement strategies. The media and the scientific literature pay little attention to the possible benefits for some parts of the world of a warming climate; bad news always attracts more attention. So let us consider these benefits, as well as the costs, before discussing the current strategies that are being used to alleviate global climate change.> …there is actually both good and bad news about global warming—and some ugly news about abatement strategiesCertainly, the global climate will get warmer, but this, in itself, is not intrinsically bad; we do not necessarily live in the ‘best of all possible climates’. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC; Geneva, Switzerland) has based its estimates of how much the climate will change on the assumption that economic growth is fuelled by increased energy use, which, in turn, increases the production of greenhouse gases. Accordingly, the models that predict the greatest change in climate are driven by forecasts of rapid worldwide economic growth predominantly fuelled by fossil fuels. Yet some IPCC models, which use more realistic growth rates, predict average temperature increases by the end of this century of 2–3 oC. However, virtually all models predict that the coldest parts of the world—near the polar ice caps—will warm the most, with temperatures likely to increase most during the night and the winter (Gates et al , 1992; Houghton et al , 1992).A 2–3 oC increase is, in fact, a rather moderate climate change; …