ABSTRACT
This chapter describes many of the scientific uncertainties surrounding global warming and argues that the necessary research be completed before precipitous and costly governmental actions are taken for the sake of dubious benefits. Climate warming, as a possible consequence of greenhouse effects, has emerged as the major environmental issue of the 1990s. The scientific base for greenhouse warming includes some facts, lots of uncertainty, and just plain ignorance—requiring more observations, better theories, and more extensive calculations. A United Nations-sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has been laying the groundwork for an international convention aimed at averting such a climate catastrophe. Global energy conservation can best be achieved by pricing rather than by command-and-control methods. Prices should include the external costs that are avoided by the user and transferred to someone else. The idea is to have the polluter or the beneficiary pay the cost. Energy efficiency should be attainable without much intervention, provided it pays for itself.
