Geosciences and climate

Because of their understanding of climate changes during the geological pas t geoscientists can make important contributions to the evaluation of the c urrent climate scenario. The climate factors that are actually decisive, su ch as changes in solar energy, which have substantially characterized the t emperatures prevailing on the earth and continue to determine them, cannot be controlled by man. Impacts introduced by anthropogenic influences, such as the input of climatically relevant gases into the atmosphere, represent the only possibility of intervention even though the effects of countermeas ures on the climate are bound to remain slight. In view of the relatively m inor effects that anthropogenic carbon dioxide has had, and will presumably continue to have, on the climate scenario it must be wondered whether the considerable effort expended on countermeasures is always justifiable from an economic point of view. In spite of this, the consumption of fossil fuel s, and thus the emission of carbon dioxide, must be kept as low as possible for reasons of environmental protection and the preservation of raze mater ials. The BGR (Federal Institute for Geosciences and Raw Materials) suggest s that these findings should be incorporated in the arguments put forward b y policy makers when decisions on industrial development and global warming prevention are made, so that the dialogue between economic and ecological interests can yield sensible and environmentally compatible solutions at re asonable cost. The inclusion of, and even closer cooperation between, neo-c limatology, which focuses on the more recent past, and palaeo-climate resea rch, which applies geoscience to reconstruct climatological data, is creati ng an enhanced basis for future climate forecasts. Sudden and severe climat e changes, the reasons for which have not been determined to date, are know n to have occurred within one decade in prehistoric times. The justified qu estion about forecasting short- and medium-term climate changes cannot yet be answered by reliable model predictions. In the long run, however, astron omic and geoscientific findings suggest a temperature drop over the next 10 000 years.