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IS IT all over for Kyoto? Should we accept that global warming is inevitable and plan accordingly?

Yes, says Frances Cairncross, president of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (BA) which held its annual festival in Norwich, UK, this week.

On Monday Cairncross described the Kyoto protocol as “ineffectual” and called for the world to accept that “a hotter, drier world” is coming – even if everyone fulfils their obligations under Kyoto and pegs levels of carbon dioxide back below the 1990 baseline. “Adaptation policies have had far less attention than mitigation,” she told the BA.

“A hotter drier world is coming even if…

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