Medical Physiology And Therapeutics), In Situ Measurements, And Remote Sensing.

medical physiology and therapeutics), in situ measurements, and remote sensing.

 Physical science

In macrocosm, the climate reflects the qualitative character of the world's values.

In human domain, "climate" can also be seen as a metaphor for the values we pursue, such as innovation, stability, security, equality, diversity, productivity, knowledge sharing, and integrity. In the "Nature" article, it is pointed out that the "macrocosm" of our society depends on the climate it supports. Since the climate depends on the decisions that determine the size of the greenhouse gas emissions, there is a strong link between climate change and climate change policies.

Other sociological views Christine McInnis, Adrian Rodgers, Dominic Jones and Patricia Robbs have pointed out that the climate debate "serves to reinforce social inequalities that have a negative impact on our environment." When the IPCC reports that "it is increasingly likely that human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century", it suggests that the public is more comfortable with anthropogenic causes of climate change than with other possible causes.

In the USA, up to 65% of the public accept the basic scientific concept of anthropogenic climate change but many Americans are less convinced by the magnitude of the phenomenon and may not accept the significance of the conclusions that have been reached by the scientific community. One reason is that public discourse about climate change has frequently focused on the "superstorm" argument, by which any weather-related event (whether severe or mild) is attributed to climate change. This claim also feeds into the idea that only people who are very well-off or educated accept the reality of climate change. A different focus on vulnerability, on extreme weather events, is equally dismissive of those who experience no such extreme events.

Climate change makes for a difficult debate; there are not simple binary choices. There are benefits and costs of reducing emissions and there is no guarantee that it will produce the results desired, regardless of whether they are immediate or distant. In addition, the climate is not yet a catastrophe. The environmental movement is important in achieving action on climate change. As McInnis and Rogers note, "activists have ...[empowered] many citizens to feel, above all, an obligation to take action, thereby shifting the focus of the debate away from the uncertainties of human–environment interactions and, in turn, to the consequences of inaction." The assumption in public discussion that climate change has already occurred is criticised, noting that such a view "is a foundation of the current fossil fuel economy". Similarly, to a large extent, the extent of human influence on climate change has been under-estimated, leading to questions over why the climate is changing and when it will peak.

Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, has stated that "the accepted science is only a hypothesis" in an interview with "The Times". The value of the Copenhagen Consensus Project (founded by economist and philosopher William Nordhaus) to international economic policy-making is that it provides an interdisciplinary approach to economics, wherein their 100 most-cited papers, extracted from the 1,258 cited in the project's 2006 report, are used to assess the relative importance of 16 possible environmental or social policy initiatives, and rank the relative policy cost-benefits of each policy. Many of these proposed policies are politically contentious, but the results serve to highlight the fundamental lack of consensus on them.

The findings have been used in Australia for discussion of land use planning and land use planning infrastructure investment, in Japan for consideration of disaster risk reduction and recovery, and in the United States for a review of the effects of negative human climate change attitudes. The IPCC concluded in its Fifth Assessment Report, published in 2014: "Over the past century, there has been a discernible human influence on the climate system, indicated by an increasing number of observed climate anomalies, a changing climate, and changes in climate extremes."