ABSTRACT
So, what can we do if the climate does fluctuate and change? And what can we learn from the past? To answer these questions briefly: the main requirement is realism about our situation. We must seek to know and understand enough about the behaviour of climate and its effects upon our environment and resources to cast off illusions and false expectations. And to be realistic also demands humility about what man can do in the face of climatic shifts, even today, other than adapt his ways. It may well be that mankind has, and perhaps always has had, an exaggerated impression of his power to alter the climate, intentionally or otherwise, for good or ill-except on a quite local scale. Numerous global budget calculations, covering many aspects of the atmospheric system, have been aimed in recent years at producing what are hoped to be realistic numerical estimates of the effects of human activity. Yet our theoretical modelling is still (and may continue to be) inadequate to reveal the full power and means at natures disposal to buffer the climate against such interference as man produces. Nor can we be sure that the natural causes of climatic change will not overmaster the side-effects of even our enormously increasing energy production.
