Accounting for Climate Change: Introduction

Water, Air and Soil Pollution: Focus - Tập 7 - Trang 421-424 - 2007
Daniel Lieberman1, Matthias Jonas2, Wilfried Winiwarter3, Zbigniew Nahorski4, Sten Nilsson4
1ICF International, Washington, USA
2Forestry Program, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, Laxenburg, Australia
3Systems Research, Austrian Research Centers - ARC, Vienna, Austria
4Systems Research Institute, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, Poland

Tóm tắt

The assessment of greenhouse gases (GHGs) emitted to and removed from the atmosphere is high on both political and scientific agendas internationally. As increasing international concern and cooperation aim at policy-oriented solutions to the climate change problem, several issues have begun to arise regarding verification and compliance under both proposed and legislated schemes meant to reduce the human-induced global climate impact. The approaches to addressing uncertainty introduced in this article attempt to improve national inventories or to provide a basis for the standardization of inventory estimates to enable comparison of emissions and emission changes across countries. Authors of the accompanying articles use detailed uncertainty analyses to enforce the current structure of the emission trading system and attempt to internalize high levels of uncertainty by tailoring the emissions trading market rules. Assessment of uncertainty can help improve inventories and manage risk. Through recognizing the importance of, identifying and quantifying uncertainties, great strides can be made in the process of Accounting for Climate Change.