Report: Panel too optimistic about global warming
By Bill Scanlon, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)
Published April 2, 2008 at 11:53 a.m.
Updated April 3, 2008 at 12:23 a.m.
Efforts to reduce carbon dioxide levels worldwide will be much tougher than anticipated and will fail unless government mandates reinforce technology breakthroughs, a report says.
The report by Colorado scientists says that the Nobel Peace Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is overly optimistic when it says carbon dioxide can be reduced - and global warming slowed - mainly by better technology, independent of what governments do.
Lead author Roger Pielke Jr., of the University of Colorado, points out that energy use in rapidly growing Asian economies is exceeding forecasts, and powered mostly by the same fossil fuels that add carbon dioxide to the atmosphere and fuel global warming.
The report, by CU, the Boulder-based National Center for Atmospheric Research and McGill University in Montreal, appears in the April edition of the British scientific journal Nature.
Technological innovation is essential, the authors said in the report, titled "Dangerous Assumptions."
"The question is, to what degree should policy focus explicitly on motivating such innovation? The IPCC plays a risky game in assuming that spontaneous advances in technological innovation will carry most of the burden," the report says.
Pielke said he believes that nations need to fight climate change but that they also need to adapt to it.
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April 2, 2008
3:23 p.m.
Suggest removal
temurlan writes:
Gene,
It's the enviornment friendly version of a cardboard box.
April 3, 2008
12:26 p.m.
Suggest removal
drcoles writes:
Over 400 World Wide Prominent Scientists Disputed Man-Made Global Warming Claims in 2007. See http://tinyurl.com/2dv6nz