Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • Perspective
  • Published:

Embracing uncertainty in climate change policy

Nature Climate Change volume 5, pages 917–920 (2015)Cite this article

Subjects

Abstract

The 'pledge and review' approach to reducing greenhouse-gas emissions presents an opportunity to link mitigation goals explicitly to the evolving climate response. This seems desirable because the progression from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's fourth to fifth assessment reports has seen little reduction in uncertainty. A common reaction to persistent uncertainties is to advocate mitigation policies that are robust even under worst-case scenarios, thereby focusing attention on upper extremes of both the climate response and the costs of impacts and mitigation, all of which are highly contestable. Here we ask whether those contributing to the formation of climate policies can learn from 'adaptive management' techniques. Recognizing that long-lived greenhouse gas emissions have to be net zero by the time temperatures reach a target stabilization level, such as 2 °C above pre-industrial levels, and anchoring commitments to an agreed index of attributable anthropogenic warming would provide a transparent approach to meeting such a temperature goal without prior consensus on the climate response.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Buy this article

  • Purchase on SpringerLink
  • Instant access to full article PDF
Buy now

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Figure 1: An index of anthropogenic warming.

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Schelling, T. Some economics of global warming. Am. Econ. Rev. 82, 1–14 (1992).

    Google Scholar 

  2. Barrett, S. The theory of international environmental agreements. Handbook Environ. Econ. 3, 1457–1516 (2005).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Victor, D. G. Plan B for Copenhagen. Nature 461, 342–344 (2009).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  4. Pierson, P. The limits of design: explaining institutional origins and change. Governance 13, 475–499 (2000).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Levin, K., Cashore, B., Berstein, S. & Auld, G. Overcoming the tragedy of super wicked problems: constraining our future selves to ameliorate global climate change Policy Sci. 45, 123–152 (2012).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  6. Weaver, K. Automatic Government (Brookings Institute, 1986).

    Google Scholar 

  7. Patashnik, P. Reforms at Risk (Princeton Univ. Press, 2008).

    Google Scholar 

  8. Holling, C. S. Adaptive Environmental Assessment and Management (Wiley, 1978).

    Google Scholar 

  9. Taleb, N. N. Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder (Pengiun, 2012).

    Google Scholar 

  10. United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UN, 1992); https://unfccc.int/files/essential_background/background_publications_htmlpdf/application/pdf/conveng.pdf.

  11. Stern, N. The structure of economic modeling of the potential impacts of climate change: grafting gross underestimation of risk onto already narrow science models. J. Econ. Lit. 51, 838–859 (2013).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  12. Schneider, S. H. & Mastrandrea, M. D. Probabilistic assessment of “dangerous” climate change and emissions pathways. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 102, 15728–15735 (2005).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  13. UNFCCC The Cancun Agreements http://cancun.unfccc.int/ (2010).

  14. Meinshausen, M. et al. Greenhouse-gas emission targets for limiting global warming to 2 °C. Nature 458, 1158–1162 (2009).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  15. Rogelj, J. et al. Emission pathways consistent with a 2 °C global temperature limit. Nature Clim. Change 1, 413–418 (2011).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  16. German Advisory Council on Global Change Solving the Climate Dilemma: The Budget Approach (WBGU, 2009).

  17. IPCC Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis. (eds. Stocker, T. F. et al.) (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2013).

  18. UNFCCC The Lima Decision https://unfccc.int/files/meetings/lima_dec_2014/application/pdf/auv_cop20_lima_call_for_climate_action.pdf (2015).

  19. Weitzman, M. GHG targets as insurance against catastrophic climate damages. J. Public Econ. Theory 14, 221–244 (2012).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  20. Victor, D. G. & Kennel, C. F. Climate policy: ditch the 2 °C warming goal. Nature 514, 30–31 (2014).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  21. Jordan, A. et al. Going beyond two degrees? The risks and opportunities of alternative options. Clim. Policy 13, 751–769 (2013).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  22. Aldrin, M. et al. Bayesian estimation of climate sensitivity based on a simple climate model fitted to observations of hemispheric temperatures and global ocean heat content. Environmetrics 23, 253–271 (2012).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  23. Otto, A. et al. Energy budget constraints on climate response. Nature Geosci. 6, 415–416 (2013).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  24. Williams, B. K. Adaptive management of natural resources — framework and issues. J. Environ. Manage. 92, 1346–1353 (2011).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  25. Delta Programme 2015. Working on the Delta: The Decisions to Keep the Netherlands Safe and Liveable (Ministry of Infrastructure and the Environment, 2014).

  26. McKitrick, R. A simple state-contingent pricing rule for complex intertemporal externalities. Energ. Econ. 33, 111–120 (2011).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  27. Leach, A. J. The climate change learning curve. J. Econ. Dyn. Control, 31, 1728–1752 (2007).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  28. Hasselmann, K. Multi-pattern fingerprint method for detection and attribution of climate change. Clim. Dyn. 13, 601–611 (1997).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  29. Boucher, O. & Reddy, M. Climate trade-off between black carbon and carbon dioxide emissions. Energ. Policy, 36, 193–200 (2008).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  30. Myhre, G. et al. in Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis (eds Stocker, T. F. et al.) Ch. 8 (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2013).

    Google Scholar 

  31. Lazarus, R. Super wicked problems and climate change: restraining the present to liberate the future. Cornell Law Rev. 94, 1153–1233 (2009).

    Google Scholar 

  32. Allen, M. R., Frame, D. J. & Mason, C. F. The case for mandatory sequestration. Nature Geosci. 2, 813–814 (2009).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  33. Morice, C. P., Kennedy, J. J., Rayner, N. A. & Jones, P. D. Quantifying uncertainties in global and regional temperature change using an ensemble of observational estimates: The HadCRUT4 data set. J. Geophys. Res. Atmos, 117, D08101 (2012).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  34. Meinshausen, M. et al. The RCP greenhouse gas concentration and their extensions from 1765 to 2300. Climatic Change, 109, 213–241 (2011).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  35. Boucher, O. & Reddy, M. Climate trade-off between black carbon and carbon dioxide emissions. Energy Policy 36, 193–200 (2008).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  36. Myhre, G. et al. in Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis (eds Stocker, T. F. et al.) Ch. 8 (IPCC, Cambridge Univ. Press, 2013).

Download references

Acknowledgements

Myles Allen was supported by the Oxford Martin School.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford, Oxford, OX1 3QY, UK

    Friederike E. L. Otto, Alexander Otto & Myles R. Allen

  2. New Zealand Climate Change Research Institute, Victoria University of Wellington, PO Box 600, Wellington, New Zealand

    David J. Frame

  3. Department of Physics, Atmospheric, Oceanic and Planetary Physics, University of Oxford, Oxford, OX1 3PU, UK

    Myles R. Allen

Authors
  1. Friederike E. L. Otto
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. David J. Frame
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Alexander Otto
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Myles R. Allen
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Contributions

All authors contributed extensively to the writing of the paper.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Friederike E. L. Otto.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing financial interests.

Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary information (XLSX 487 kb)

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Otto, F., Frame, D., Otto, A. et al. Embracing uncertainty in climate change policy. Nature Clim Change 5, 917–920 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate2716

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate2716

This article is cited by

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing