Great Britain?s leading scientific body has issued an
updated guide to climate change. In the guide it acknowledges uncertainties in
the science regarding global warming and that it is impossible to know how the
earth?s climate will change in the future. This is according to a news story in
the London Daily Mail.
The importance of this cannot be overstated. If future climate
change cannot be predicted then neither can the future consequences of that
change, whatever they may be. All predictions of future catastrophe are based
on specific predictions of future warming. This also means that all cost
analysis that is based on these predictions are just a meaningless. As reported
in the Daily Mail article, the guide states that :
Uncertainty can work both ways, since the changes and their
impacts may be either smaller or larger than those projected?There is currently
insufficient understanding of the enhanced melting and retreat of the ice
sheets on Greenland and West Antarctica to predict exactly how much the rate of
sea level rise will increase above that observed in the past century for a given
temperature increase.
