In:
Science, American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), Vol. 356, No. 6337 ( 2017-05-05), p. 492-493
Kurzfassung:
Global warming potentials (GWPs) have become an essential element of climate policy and are built into legal structures that regulate greenhouse gas emissions. This is in spite of a well-known shortcoming: GWP hides trade-offs between short- and long-term policy objectives inside a single time scale of 100 or 20 years ( 1 ). The most common form, GWP 100 , focuses on the climate impact of a pulse emission over 100 years, diluting near-term effects and misleadingly implying that short-lived climate pollutants exert forcings in the long-term, long after they are removed from the atmosphere ( 2 ). Meanwhile, GWP 20 ignores climate effects after 20 years. We propose that these time scales be ubiquitously reported as an inseparable pair, much like systolic-diastolic blood pressure and city-highway vehicle fuel economy, to make the climate effect of using one or the other time scale explicit. Policy-makers often treat a GWP as a value-neutral measure, but the time-scale choice is central to achieving specific objectives ( 2 – 4 ).
Materialart:
Online-Ressource
ISSN:
0036-8075
,
1095-9203
DOI:
10.1126/science.aaj2350
Sprache:
Englisch
Verlag:
American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
Publikationsdatum:
2017
ZDB Id:
128410-1
ZDB Id:
2066996-3
ZDB Id:
2060783-0
SSG:
11
