What's the old joke? Prediction is hard, especially about the future. How do you predict the climate of 2100? Well, you have to know how much CO2, methane, nitrous oxide, aerosols—that's dust and smoke—are going to be there, because that changes what we call the forcing—the pressures on the climate system—to be warmer or colder. We know it's going to be warmer. That's virtually certain.
But we don't know what these levels are going to be on the basis of any history. There's never been a time before when there was six to ten billion people on the Earth, when they're demanding dramatic increases in their standards of living, and when they're using the cheapest available technology—usually coal and oil burning—to get there. So, before you can forecast how warm it will be in 2100—and whether it's worth a trillion-dollar investment not to have that outcome—you've got to know a bunch of social factors.
What's the old joke? Prediction is hard, especially about the future. How do you predict the climate of 2100? Well, you have to know how much CO2, methane, nitrous oxide, aerosols—that's dust and smoke—are going to be there, because that changes what we call the forcing—the pressures on the climate system—to be warmer or colder. We know it's going to be warmer. That's virtually certain.
But we don't know what these levels are going to be on the basis of any history. There's never been a time before when there was six to ten billion people on the Earth, when they're demanding dramatic increases in their standards of living, and when they're using the cheapest available technology—usually coal and oil burning—to get there. So, before you can forecast how warm it will be in 2100—and whether it's worth a trillion-dollar investment not to have that outcome—you've got to know a bunch of social factors.
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