NEWS GLOBAL WARMING-------------------------------- face of such uncertainty - these were left Hot air for several social scientists who spoke or what? later in the event's programme. Amidst Boston searchers, representing the far ends of the sketchy discussion of the possibility of STEPHEN Schneider, of the National Cen­ such things as a "world carbon budget", spectrum of current debate within the ter for Atmospheric Research, faced off perhaps the best prescription came from community of atmospheric researchers, against Richard Lindzen of Massachusetts ended up agreeing on more points than MIT economist Henry Jacoby. If the threat of global warming can wean the Institute of Technology (MIT) last week than they might have otherwise acknow­ planet off of its harmful greenhouse gas­ in a debate at MIT entitled "Is it getting ledged. Schneider readily acknowledged hotter or what?" Schneider supports the that current models are neither particu­ producing ways, he said, it can thereby view that current climate models can larly accurate nor reliable. Lindzen, for encourage us to do those things we prob­ reasonably predict a mean rise in global his part, agreed upon the need for intensi­ ably "ought to be doing anyway." As temperatures of 2 °C or more over the fied research efforts, if only "to find out Jacoby put it, in the face of potential next century; Lindzen is an increasingly why the models are wrong". As for the global warming the answer is evident: vociferous critic of the inadequacies of policy questions of how to respond...