date: Wed, 28 Oct 1998 08:19:58 -0500 from: robert swart subject: storylines to: sres team Dear Naki, Laurie and other SRES team members, Reading the last version of Laurie's storylines, I am feeling comfortable enough to put them on the website and have them as the basis of the actual SRES report, with the notable exception of B2, which has been rewritten considerably, apparently to make the story less middle-of-the-road. It now reads sometimes almost as utopian as A1 and B1 were claimed to be by some commentators, leaving only A2 as a relatively unattractive world. In my view, some of the negative aspects of B2 (low incomes, unsuccessful management of global problems!) may be mentioned more strongly, while positive aspects can be described more neutral. I do realize that the political context of IPCC seems to force us to make the storylines flatter than some authors would like to see, but a more balanced language may also reconcile differing views within the team itself. * general: spelling has to be checked (developping, developped, ressources, abandonned) * 4th line: country to country rather than countries to countries * line 6: replace "abandoned" by " loosing momentum" (no intentional development!) * line 8: replace "agressive" by "local and regional" to avoid conflict with the first paragraph * lines 11-12: delete; monitoring of economic development/pollution levels does not seem a key issue to me, while " achieving an optimum welfare level" is an unnecessary value judgement. * lines 13-14: why would international trade in this scenario be limited to commodities? I would just say that the increase in global trade slows down. * line 19: is "convergence of economic growth" an evident term? Are decreasing income differences between regions typical for B2? According to the table (and my understanding) international income inequalities only decrease slowly or not at all as compared to A1/B1. * line 25: replace "holistically" by "integrated" * last line: a reduction of emissions at all scales is incorrect: CO2 emissions are increasing in this scenario, mention how much as in the other cases. I hope that before the end of this week the revised storylines can be put on the web, and I would like to call upon the small SRES editorial board (Shukla, Kram, Naki and myself) to check the website next week and decide on another round of advertising, noting that a.o. based on responses the contents have been upgraded and that input is still needed to help the team with the drafting of its report. Last time, the website hits were highest just after such advertising. Finally, I would like to call on all team members to collect literature references to (elements of) storylines that can be used to found the narratives in the literature in the SRES report. I volunteer to keep a file on these references for future use, so please send me copies of articles or - in case of reports, books - summaries and full reference information. If Naki agrees, I can also send the last version of the storylines to Jerome Glenn of the Millennium Project, who is keeping a bibliography of published futures/scenarios and who may helpin this respect. Regards, Rob Swart