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financial support
in order to transform plans into concrete actions, start acting. In this context,
Boehmer-Christiansen (1997) discussed various circumstances concerning
And only after that can politicians, who should ensure the
“
scien-
ti
. Clearly, the IPCC Reports may be the fundamental documents, if
anthropogenic impact on climate is really dangerous. However, the dif
c provision
”
cult prob-
lem is how to determine the criteria of
and who should be responsible for
it (considering also the socio-economic and political factors).
Still there are many uncertainties in this problem. In particular, in connection
with the discussion of necessity to reduce GHGs emission, the emphasis is placed
on decreasing the scale of the use of coal, especially in electric power production
(while for natural gas the conditional
“
danger
”
constitutes 15, in
the case of coal it reaches 25 and more, being very variable). An
“
factor of CO
2
emissions
”
on coal
was not, however, connected with ecological motives. The question of ecology did
not rise at all till the mid-1980s, when the price of oil and gas dropped (especially in
1986). As to resolve the appearing economic problems, some ecological allies were
needed to provide the competitive ability of
“
attack
”
“
pure
”
energy for the sake of
“
sus-
tainable development
.
It is no mere chance that the IPCC was forethought in 1995, really planned in
1987, and started functioning in 1988. Governments of various countries support
the plans of GHGs emissions reduction not for ecological but for other reasons:
enhancement of national nuclear energy (Germany); an increase of the export
potential for electric power produced by nuclear power stations and gas (France,
Norway); an increase of the size of
”
financial support, etc. Naturally, the countries
where electric power depends on coal, are most skeptical about the
“
greenhouse
”
warming.
Having analyzed the role of various international organizations and programs in
the problem of global climate change, Boehmer-Christiansen (1997) emphasized:
“
Climate policy cannot be understood without a deeper analysis of the role of
science and scienti
c understanding of the coalition of non-ecological interests
(both commercial and bureaucratic) which serve as a driving force of development
of events on international scales. Where this coalition will lead us, remains unclear,
so far
.
Constructive prospects of resolving this problem are connected with the devel-
opment and application of complex models to assess possible changes of climate
and socio-economic development. In the detailed overview of methods and results
of numerical modeling of global climate change with regard for dynamics of socio-
economic processes, prepared by Parson and Fisher-Vanden (1997), the main
aspects of the so-called integral assessments (IA) have been discussed. The main
goal of such developments is to substantiate recommendations for people making
respective decisions concerning the ecological policy.
Four concrete goals include the following problems:
”
(1) assessment of possible response to climate change;
(2) analysis of the structure of scienti
c bases of modeling and characteristic
uncertainties of the results obtained;
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