Even if we knew how much soto carbon dioxide will be emitted by every country in the world over the coming 50 years, even if we knew that, we wouldn't know how much the temperature would increase as a result. We might have estimates, we might have a range of possibilities, but we don't know. And so i think the the scientific community and the policy community, if anything, has done us aservice with the certainty they've used around these issues.
Economist Robert Pindyck of MIT talks about his book, Climate Future, with EconTalk host Russ Roberts. Pindyck lays out what we know and do not know about climate change. He argues that because of the nature of greenhouse gases, adaptation must be part of the policy response to climate change.