FUTURE CLIMATE ANALYSIS

This Analysis/Model Report (AMR) documents an analysis that was performed to estimate climatic variables for the next 10,000 years by forecasting the timing and nature of climate change at Yucca Mountain (YM), Nevada (Figure l), the site of a potential repository for high-level radioactive waste. The future-climate estimates are based on an analysis of past-climate data from analog meteorological stations, and this AMR provides the rationale for the selection of these analog stations. The stations selected provide an upper and a lower climate bound for each future climate, and the data from those sites will provide input to the infiltration model (USGS 2000) and for the total system performance assessment for the Site Recommendation (TSPA-SR) at YM. Forecasting long-term future climates, especially for the next 10,000 years, is highly speculative and rarely attempted. A very limited literature exists concerning the subject, largely from the British radioactive waste disposal effort. The discussion presented here is one method, among many, of establishing upper and lower bounds for future climate estimates. The method used here involves selecting a particular past climate from many past climates, as an analog for future climate. Other studies might develop a different rationale or select other past climates resulting in a different future climate analog

On sociology and STS

This paper starts by exploring the development of Science, Technology and Society (STS) in the UK in the late 1960s, emphasising its interdiciplinary roots, and comparing and contrasting it with the concerns of Sociology. It then turns to more recent developments in STS, outlining the importance of material semiotics to important traditions within the discipline including those influenced by actor network theory, feminism, and postcolonialism. It notes, in consistency with the Foucauldian approach, that material semiotics implies that knowledge traditions are performative, helping to create the realities that they describe. The paper concludes by exploring the implications of this performatibity for the politics of research methods and for the future character of social science research

The international context for industrialisation in the coming decade

Focuses on the aspects of changing international climate including restricted market access, radical electronics-based technical change, structured adjustment programs and increased military expenditures in newly industrialized countries. Factors contributing to the expansion of global trade; Effects of protectionism on exports; Reason for the economic benefits of utilization of electronics-based automation technologies in innovating firms