Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- 1 Concerns about Climate Change and Global Warming
- 2 Posing the Problem
- 3 Adaptive Strategies for Climate Change
- 4 Energy Efficiency: a Little Goes a Long Way
- 5 The Potential of Renewable Energy to Reduce Carbon Emissions
- 6 Carbonless Transportation and Energy Storage in Future Energy Systems
- 7 What Can Nuclear Power Accomplish to Reduce CO2 Emissions
- 8 Nuclear Fusion Energy
- 9 Energy Prosperity Within the Twenty-first Century and Beyond: Options and the Unique Roles of the Sun and the Moon
- 10 Geoengineering the Climate: History and Prospect
- Index
2 - Posing the Problem
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 October 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- 1 Concerns about Climate Change and Global Warming
- 2 Posing the Problem
- 3 Adaptive Strategies for Climate Change
- 4 Energy Efficiency: a Little Goes a Long Way
- 5 The Potential of Renewable Energy to Reduce Carbon Emissions
- 6 Carbonless Transportation and Energy Storage in Future Energy Systems
- 7 What Can Nuclear Power Accomplish to Reduce CO2 Emissions
- 8 Nuclear Fusion Energy
- 9 Energy Prosperity Within the Twenty-first Century and Beyond: Options and the Unique Roles of the Sun and the Moon
- 10 Geoengineering the Climate: History and Prospect
- Index
Summary
Scenarios
Scenarios are unfolding sequences of interrelated events stemming from prior and ongoing decisions. With regard to climate change and carbon emissions, the outputs of climate and carbon cycle models under different scenarios of population growth, economic development, and fossil and other fuel use have proved to be useful in exploring possible policy options for mitigation of climate change due to greenhouse gas emissions. Owing to the contingent nature of historical evolution, economic and technological development may in fact be unknowable in advance. Nevertheless, the scenario approach is useful because it allows asking “what if?” questions. A variety of scenarios have been published by several research groups. There is, of course, an infinite variety of scenarios that will lead, say, to keeping the future level of CO2 below a certain level. One of the earliest sets is that presented in the first of the scientific reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Subsequent scenarios have been suggested by Wigley et al. (1996) and by Nakicenovic et al. (1998).
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) scenarios
The authors of the IPCC report point out that scenarios are not predictions of the future, but merely illustrate the effects of a range of economic, demographic, and policy assumptions. In Climate Change 1992 the IPCC examined six scenarios, including the one called IS92a, which has become known as the Business as Usual scenario (BAU).
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Innovative Energy Strategies for CO2 Stabilization , pp. 27 - 44Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2002