What are the consequences of climate change that would motivate policy?
AFTER SCIENCE In this first set of blogs I have focused mostly on the science of climate change. The first couple talked about the IPCC report, and how it comes about, but since then, it has been mostly science. I have tried to introduce the science from a fundamental point of view, because the fundamentals are both powerful and relatively simple. Quickly, greenhouse gases hold energy close to the surface of the Earth for some amount of time. If we increase the amount of time that energy is held close to the surface of the Earth by increasing greenhouse gases, then the Earth’s surface will get warmer. There are really only two ways that the Earth takes up energy from space (the Sun) and gives it back to space (infrared terrestrial radiation), and that is through absorption and reflection of radiative energy. Of course, what happens with that extra energy held close to the Earth’s surface is complex. The same is true for the carbon dioxide and other gases we are putting into the atmosph
