Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
1
FIRST ENCOUNTERS IN THE
CLIMATE CASINO
If you read the newspaper, listen to the radio, or scan the daily blogs,
you are virtually certain to encounter stories about global warming. Here
is a sample from a variety of sources:
The last decade was the warmest on record.
The most inconvenient fact is the lack of global warming for well
over 10 years now.
Polar bears could disappear within a century.
Global warming claims are a hoax.
The Greenland ice sheet has experienced record melting.
1
Clearly, global warming is getting a lot of attention today. And just
as clearly, people disagree about whether it is real, whether it is impor-
tant, and what it means for human societies. What should the inter-
ested citizen conclude from these confl icting stories? And if the answer
is that global warming is real, how much does it matter? Where should
our concerns about global warming rank among the other issues we face,
such as persistent unemployment, a soaring public debt, low-intensity
wars, and nuclear proliferation?
The short answer is that global warming is a major threat to humans
and the natural world. I will use the metaphor that we are entering the
Climate Casino. By this, I mean that economic growth is producing
unintended but perilous changes in the climate and earth systems. These
changes will lead to unforeseeable and probably dangerous consequences.
We are rolling the climatic dice, the outcome will produce surprises,
