The logic behind solving climate change

The looming threat of climate change has been plastered all over the media in recent years. The solution just may lie in the research development of all possible scenarios that the effects of climate change may have. In the latest issue of Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development, the article "A New Toolkit for Developing Scenarios for Climate Change Research and Policy Analysis" addresses this.

This article discusses the logic and architecture behind the process of the new approach of building scenarios. In order to project all the possible outcomes that may come from climate change, scenarios must "include (1) the drivers of greenhouse gas emissions, (2) the resulting emissions, (3) assumptions about other drivers of socioeconomic development that will affect the magnitude and pattern of impacts, and/or the ability to avoid, prepare for, cope with, and recover from climate change, and (4) the adaptation and mitigation policy environment."

Parallel process is a three step plan that requires scientists to project and reconcile climate change and societal development over during the 21-century.  Then impact researchers use both projections to evaluate consequences for society and ecosystems. The scenario matrix architecture is a way that scientists can develop and tailor-make scenarios. All scenarios are created within the cells of the matrix. It is based on shared economic pathways, which are 'plausible alternative states of human and natural societies at a macro level. When combing these processes Shared Climate Policy Assumptions are used to provide "common assumptions across a wide variety of studies.'

The article explains how these ideas are weaved into a complex system to develop scenarios that are jumpstarting climate change research into innovation in order to create solutions.