Ive been frightening myself all week by reading "Climate Code Red: the Case for Emergency Action" by David Spratt and Phillip Sutton. On the back cover it says "This meticulously documented call-to-action reveals extensive scientific evidence that the global warming crisis is far worse than officially indicated- and that we're almost at the point of no return" Whats really frightening is that things appear to be changing more rapidly than was predicted even as recently as last year when the IPCC Report was issued, but it is that IPCC Report which Governments like our own here in Australia are using as a guide to plan their response to Global Warming.
On the websites and Blogs that Ive been trawling all week for material for my next Blog, I frequently came across Warming Denialists who rubbish the IPCC saying its just a political body and couldnt produce anything other than whatever its masters deemed was politically correct, so they breezily dismiss its recommendations. But what is the IPCC?
The IPCC (The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) was established by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) to assess scientific, technical and socio-economic information concerning climate change, its potential effects and options for adaptation and mitigation. Its first Report was issued in 1990. Its assesment reports are written by hundreds of scientific experts from many fields, and represent over 40 countries. These reports are required to be Policy "Neutral" and contain no recommendations. Each report takes more than 3 years to prepare and goes through multiple stages of independent expert and government review, "the most thorough review process undertaken for any scientific assesment" acccording to Professor David Karoly, Professor of Meteorology in the school of Earth Sciences at the University of Melbourne. So Governemnts are right to take the IPCC Report seriously - it is an important and authoritative document - except for one thing: its Five years out of date! Its out of date because it takes a year or two to do the research, another year or so to get the research published and then another three for the IPCC to scrutinise it and analyse it along with all the other material and eventually write a report that everyone agrees on. There are many environmentalists who regard this process as not only too slow but too subject to the need for consensus and compromise resulting in a report that is too weak. Hence the need for books like Climate Code Red which attempt to speed up that process.
What I was going to do was condense some of the central issues into a few blogs - but I realise now that its an impossible task- for me at least - the issues are huge and interconnected and there is much thats unresolved. Instead I submit this Introduction and link to an excellent Review in New Scientist called " Climate Change: A Review for the Perplexed
"Our planet's climate is anything but simple. All kinds of factors influence it, from massive events on the Sun to the growth of microscopic creatures in the oceans, and there are subtle interactions between many of these factors.
Yet despite all the complexities, a firm and ever-growing body of evidence points to a clear picture: the world is warming, this warming is due to human activity increasing levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, and if emissions continue unabated the warming will too, with increasingly serious consequences.
Yes, there are still big uncertainties in some predictions, but these swing both ways. For example, the response of clouds could slow the warming or speed it up.
With so much at stake, it is right that climate science is subjected to the most intense scrutiny. What does not help is for the real issues to be muddied by discredited arguments or wild theories.
So for those who are not sure what to believe, here is our round-up of the most common climate myths and misconceptions.
2 comments:
Accepting climate change as a "given", the really big question, at least for Australia, is whether we commit to seriously reducing our emissions, with the associated costs, unless or until the rest of the other big emitters such as China and India also commit? One doubts whether the environment is really very high on their agendas. How does the rest of the world convince/persuade them of the seriousness of the situation?
Thanks Aaron. China has only very recently become a greater producer of greenhouse gases than the USA as the chinese struggle to raise their standard of living to something approaching what people in the west regard as their basic right.But its obvious that the world could not survive if everyone on the Planet tried to have the standard of living we do. To me, this means there is something inherently immoral/unethical/just plain wrong about our way of life - we have been taking far more from the earth and creating a lifestyle that is far in excess of what we are entitled to. I believe the only way China - and the rest of the underdeveloped nations - could be persuaded to back away from the quest for a Western affluent way of life is for the West to back away from it too and admit that our excesses and greed and waste are the primary cause of the ghastly problem now confronting everyone on the planet. I think we have to go ahead ourselves and do it, make the sacrifices and the radical changes that the whole world has to make and not necessarily wait until someone else goes first. I agree with you that doing it alone is going to cost us and NOT make any difference to the long term outcome unless everyone else does it as well.I aslo believe that its not going to happen except by politicians forcing it on us -self interest, the impulse that drives Capitalism can not be trusted to sort this horror out. We are therefore going to need very brave and visionary and inspirational leaders, people like Churchill and Nelson Mandela.How ghastly it might turn out for the entire human race that George Bush stole the election off Al Gore.Obama is going to have to be one of those leaders - if he isnt up to it,it might be too late for the next president.Its interesting that the so called "Financial Crisis" has resulted in many countries working together to solve that problem - and, sorry to get back to Hitler again but most of the world united against that threat, once it was realised how serious it was. Maybe that will happen again but it needs to happen really soon....
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