DiscussWorldIssues - Socio-Economic Religion and Political Uncensored Debate - View Single Post

**8Uxtkz7F** · 07-30-2012, 11:27 PM

It is also a strong argument for adopting a cautious approach to the regulation of industrial processes that may affect the climate.
what like, climate stabilisation?

http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/ad...05-2009.58.pdf

A B S T R A C T
The goals and objectives of ‘climate stabilization’ feature heavily in contemporary environmental policy and in this paper we trace the factors that have contributed to the rise of this concept and the scientific ideas behind it. In particular, we explore how the stabilization-based discourse has become dominant through developments in climate science, environmental economics and policymaking. That this discourse is tethered to contemporary policy proposals is unsurprising; but that it has remained
relatively free of critical scrutiny can be associated with fears of unsettling often-tenuous political processes taking place at multiple scales. Nonetheless, we posit that the fundamental premises behind stabilization targets are badly matched to the actual problem of the intergenerational management of climate change, scientifically and politically, and destined to fail.

This report thereby feeds into and perpetuates a particular approach to long-term climate targets and, additionally, has continued to privilege discussions of long-term mitigation over adaptation.
Reaching coordinated solutions to climate change becomes a question of mitigating and managing the long-term future in a very specific, highly abstract way, since it involves future generations emitting just enough CO2 to maintain the concentrations at their target levels indefinitely regardless of the implications of this
strategy for them and their descendents.

The reliance on equilibrium targets simpliﬁes certain parts of the problem by removing the (inconvenient) transience, allowing us to draw a simple map between concentration and sensitivity that does not depend on the thermal inertia of the system. However, the equilibrium system properties (such as climate sensitivity) are subject to considerable uncertainty, and thus the translation from damages (temperature increase) to concentration targets is also subject to uncertainty.
Even if we assume that climate sensitivity is in the vicinity of the IPCC’s
estimate(s), we would need to stabilize concentrations anywhere in the vicinity of 700–330 ppmv CO2 (and this range neglects the additional uncertainty that might be produced from equilibrium temperature–carbon cycle feedbacks).

07-30-2012, 11:27 PM	#20
8Uxtkz7F Join Date Oct 2005 Posts 548 Senior Member	It is also a strong argument for adopting a cautious approach to the regulation of industrial processes that may affect the climate. what like, climate stabilisation? http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/ad...05-2009.58.pdf A B S T R A C T The goals and objectives of ‘climate stabilization’ feature heavily in contemporary environmental policy and in this paper we trace the factors that have contributed to the rise of this concept and the scientific ideas behind it. In particular, we explore how the stabilization-based discourse has become dominant through developments in climate science, environmental economics and policymaking. That this discourse is tethered to contemporary policy proposals is unsurprising; but that it has remained relatively free of critical scrutiny can be associated with fears of unsettling often-tenuous political processes taking place at multiple scales. Nonetheless, we posit that the fundamental premises behind stabilization targets are badly matched to the actual problem of the intergenerational management of climate change, scientifically and politically, and destined to fail. This report thereby feeds into and perpetuates a particular approach to long-term climate targets and, additionally, has continued to privilege discussions of long-term mitigation over adaptation. Reaching coordinated solutions to climate change becomes a question of mitigating and managing the long-term future in a very specific, highly abstract way, since it involves future generations emitting just enough CO2 to maintain the concentrations at their target levels indefinitely regardless of the implications of this strategy for them and their descendents. The reliance on equilibrium targets simpliﬁes certain parts of the problem by removing the (inconvenient) transience, allowing us to draw a simple map between concentration and sensitivity that does not depend on the thermal inertia of the system. However, the equilibrium system properties (such as climate sensitivity) are subject to considerable uncertainty, and thus the translation from damages (temperature increase) to concentration targets is also subject to uncertainty. Even if we assume that climate sensitivity is in the vicinity of the IPCC’s estimate(s), we would need to stabilize concentrations anywhere in the vicinity of 700–330 ppmv CO2 (and this range neglects the additional uncertainty that might be produced from equilibrium temperature–carbon cycle feedbacks).
	Quote