On Wed, Apr 16, 2008 at 5:29 PM, James Annan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> To put it another way, how do you distinguish adapting to *climate
> change* from adapting to *climate*?
Semantically.
I don't think this matches what Dan was asking or what I was saying. Consider:
adaptation: a form or structure modified to fit a changed environment.
mitigation: moderation of a quality or condition in force or
intensity; alleviation.
The relationship between these standard definitions words is not
complementary, but they are treated as such in the climate debate.
Accordingly, I have been assuming that adaptation is the residual cost
after whatever level of forcing we don't mitigate creates whatever
level of change it forces.
If that's right, it isn't something we budget for, it's just what we
end up paying for.
Pielke Jr with some support from John Fleck has been arguing that we
should balance our investments between mitigation and adaptation. I
have trouble understanding what they are getting at.
I THINK they may be arguing for what I would call **resilience**,
which is not about mitigating climate change but rather about
**mitigating the sensitivity of human civilization** to accelerating
climate change.
I don't think it makes sense to make expenditures on adaptation in
advance of knowing what it is we need to adapt to. It makes sense to
estimate it, yes, so as to know how far to go with mitigation, but I
think it's clear enough that this is "much much further than we have
already gone". Spending on adaptation to future climate change is like
putting a cast on an as yet unbroken leg.
By suggesting we can talk about adapting to non-change, you are making
the conversation even fuzzier. What I've learned from this is that we
need to define our terms better. James, I don't think your use of the
word "adapt" is really all that adaptive. It can hardly be placed in
opposition to mitigation if there is nothing to mitigate, so it only
further muddies the waters, even though it is a perfectly ordinary use
of the word without that context.
mt
--~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
Global Change ("globalchange") newsgroup. Global Change is a public, moderated
venue for discussion of science, technology, economics and policy dimensions of
global environmental change.
Posts will be admitted to the list if and only if any moderator finds the
submission to be constructive and/or interesting, on topic, and not
gratuitously rude.
To post to this group, send email to [email protected]
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
For more options, visit this group at
http://groups.google.com/group/globalchange
-~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
