Article on climate policies and uncertainty published in Nature Climate Change

13-August-15

The article “Selection of Climate Policies under the Uncertainties in the Fifth Assessment Report of the IPCC”, is authored by the CMCC and FEEM researchers Laurent Drouet, Valentina Bosetti and Massimo Tavoni.

The authors have drawn on the vast amount of data and information collected in the three volumes of the Fifth Assessment Report on Climate Change of the IPCC and have transformed this wealth of data into climate policies using different criteria from decision sciences.
The article shows that uncertainty is indeed a crucial factor in determining climate policies. It also shows that the traditional methods to treat uncertainty are unsatisfactory, and that reframing the climate change debate in terms of analytic risk management allows us to create a bridge between the more precautious scientific approach and the efficiency-based policy perspective.