date: Fri, 6 Jun 2003 16:19:39 +0100 from: "Emma L. Tompkins" subject: your lunchtime presentation to: "'Mike Hulme'" Hi Mike I just wanted to put into words what I was poorly expressing at lunch. 1) You argue that dangerous climate change is undefinable at the global scale as it is context-dependent. 2) The proponents of global measures or indicators of 'danger' all omit important elements and hence provided very biased results which generate different policy conclusions. 3) I would argue that it is important that people understand what the dangers of climate change are so that we can work towards solving the problem - but this is what the impacts work provides (I think). 4) If dangerous climate change cannot be defined at the global scale, we need to be very clear about this and suggest that better approaches might be to contextualise climate change for different groups and smaller scales - perhaps using your method... Does there really have to be a chapter on this in AR4? Instead 1 chapter on sensitivity analysis of the impacts, 1 on perceptions of what dangerous mean, and 1 on communicating this information might be a better way to deal with this? Hope this helps explain my thoughts a little better, Emma --**----**----**----**----**----**----**-- Dr Emma L. Tompkins Research Fellow Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, School of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia, Norwich, NR4 7TJ, U.K. Tel: +44 (0)1603 593910 Fax: +44 (0)1603 593901 Email: e.tompkins@uea.ac.uk Web: http://www.tyndall.ac.uk --**----**----**----**----**----**----**--