Climate experts draw a blank on global warming
Date: 16-Sep-99
Country: UK
The finding comes in a draft report on emissions by the United Nation's
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which contains the
views of hundreds of scientists and economists.
Usually the United Nations report presents a central scenario,
predicting the likely emissions of greenhouse gases over the coming
century if governments do nothing to cut them.
But this time the IPCC says the uncertainties are such that this isn't
possible, so the authors have come up with 40 scenarios based around
four equally plausible assumptions about world population and economic
and technical advances.
The old central scenario had carbon dioxide emissions in 2100 at around
18 billion tonnes, or three times current annual levels. But the new
report has predictions ranging anywhere from 4.3 billion tonnes to 36.7
billion.
"There can be no best guess...the future is inherently unpredictable and
views will differ on which of the scenarios could be more likely," the
report says.
Carbon dioxide is the most important gas in terms of its influence on
global warming.