Monday, February 5, 2007

Climate Open-Access

In light of the current release of the results from the 4th Assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (the full report will be released in sections throughout the year), we will hopefully begin to see more of an emphasis placed on developing economicaly feasible ways to both mitigate the negative impacts, and adapt to whatever changes are imminent. As such, it is probably high time to think about the creation of an open access style journal that encompasses all viewpoints that can be openly discussed and shared, to encourage tranparency. The climate issue was framed as a 'debate' for far too long; in truth, once the evidence from multiple sources started to come in, it really wasn't much of a debate. However, those who chose to cast doubt (which is their right) continued to cry afoul that they were being ignored by the more prominent scientific journals and that they were in effect being 'muzzled'. Using this as experience, it would be foolish to hinder the attempts to move forward on the development of comprehensive solutions by not presenting the range of ideas in an open access forum. Rather than create another journal that focuses purely on the science, I suggest the creation of a new open access journal that deals with the applied aspects of climate change economics, adaptation, and mitigation in the 21st century.

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