Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
Figure 4.
A comparison of a transmission line on the left with a computer model of
the energy and economic system on the right. Each serves a useful function, but
computerized models are crucial tools for understanding trends and the impacts of
different policies.
determining what is happening to, say, government debt. A good model
of the fi scal situation today does not need to contain any information
on CO
2
emissions because that would have only a tiny effect on the cur-
rent budget. To think about climate change, we build models to estimate
future emissions of CO
2
, the impact of those emissions on atmospheric
concentrations of CO
2
, and the changes in climate that result. The
government defi cit does not enter into climate models because it is a
second-order or third-order infl uence on climate change.
