Forecast: Clement climes
global warming and climate change has been one of the most widely debated subjects in the past years. The conflict is not limited to political interests, but extends to scientific interpretation of data. Modelling climate change has yielded contradictory results. Some scenarios are too pessimistic, while others appear too optimistic. Moreover, it seems that both types of scenarios are taken as excuses to do nothing. Recently, some economists have argued that it is actually neither feasible nor necessary to reduce emissions in the near future. This idea has found many adherents, especially amongst those who have to protect business interests.
But the crux of the debate is not merely what policies or administrative decisions need to be adopted to combat global warming. The crucial aspect is to distinguish between the timing of carbon emissions abatement and the timing of policy action.According to Stephen Schneider and Lawrence Goulder of Stanford University, California, usa , if policies are immediately put into place and a carbon tax imposed on fossil fuels, emissions will be effectively curbed. Supporting the contention, Ujjayant Chakravorty of the University of Honolulu, Hawaii, argues that rapid development of solar techno-logy can make the use of fossil fuels redundant.
Using data on demand of energy resources by various sectors of the glo-bal economy, Chakravorty shows that global temperatures will rise by a mere 1.5-2