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Back to basics

Back to basics (pdf), by Stephen Stretton and Daniel O’Neil.

In the clamour of contention and controversy surrounding the climate change debate, sometimes it makes sense to return to first principles. I was reminded of this sharply during a conversation with a professor of solar energy technology, when he stated bluntly that speculation on solutions is worthless unless we have come up with a concise definition of the problem we are trying to solve. I hope in this initial column to humbly attempt to lay out the problem we face with the hope of looking at possible solutions, and the debates surrounding them, in later columns.