Can we assess the impacts of climatic changes?

Abstract

Assessing the impact of a given human-induced climatic change, like a global warming brought about by carbon dioxide, involves balanced examination of the implications of the specific environmental change and the other implications of the assumptions which generate the CO₂ in the first place. There will be many, simultaneous impacts on ecosystems; these are illustrated by looking at effects on photosynthesis and on marine biota. For several reasons economics is quite limited in the evaluation it can provide of such effects. Nevertheless, useful ‘scenarios’ can be constructed by combining description of possible CO₂-induced impacts with the other implied changes, for example, the increases in world mining, trading, and burning of coal. Several, often divergent pictures are likely to persist because of inherent uncertainties and cultural bias.