Anthropogenic climatic change

Book · Tue Jan 01 04:00:00 EST 1991

OSTI ID:7249444

Budyko, M I; Izrael, Y A

The U.S.S.R. report of the State Committee for Hydrometeorology and the Academy of Sciences offer a provocative and controversial vision of future climates of the Earth. Evoking the traditional concept of geological thinking that the past is prologue to the future, they argue that certain geological intervals can serve as models of the climate of the future. The Holocene optimum (5000-6000 years ago), the last interglacial (some 125,000 years ago), and the Pliocene (some several million years ago) represent a sequence of time, each somewhat warmer than the previous one. By analogue, these past intervals represent a hypothetical sequence of future climate changes. A major portion of this book develops the theoretical ideas for this hypothesis and summarizes the patterns of climate change for these intervals. Although Soviet authors recognize that many factors contribute to climate change, they argue that the change in CO{sub 2} levels is the dominant one. The implication of these analyses is that the future greenhouse world (climate change induced by man-made activities) may be largely favorable, at least by these reconstructions by Soviet scientist for a large part of the northern hemisphere. This has led the principal author, Michael Budyko, to argue that international measures to reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases are not justified.

• OSTI ID: 7249444
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES
540120* -- Environment
Atmospheric-- Chemicals Monitoring & Transport-- (1990-)
58 GEOSCIENCES
580000 -- Geosciences
CARBON COMPOUNDS
CARBON DIOXIDE
CARBON OXIDES
CHALCOGENIDES
CLIMATIC CHANGE
EMISSION
FORECASTING
GEOLOGIC AGES
GEOLOGIC HISTORY
GREENHOUSE EFFECT
GREENHOUSE GASES
HUMAN FACTORS
OXIDES
OXYGEN COMPOUNDS