Some very interesting points in this CBC article about the new IPCC report on climate change this morning. I’m hoping to get a chance to go through the whole thing this weekend, though I’m not totally clear on if it is actually released or not.
http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2007/04/06/climate-un.html
An incredible amount of hard data was used for this report… these are not simply vague predictions.
[quote]the science… was based on 29,000 sets of data, much of it collected in the last five years.[/quote]
A very interesting, new (at least to me), “objector” has emerged… Saudi Arabia.
[quote]The United States, China and Saudi Arabia raised many of the objections to the phrasing, often seeking to tone down the certainty of some of the more dire projections.[/quote]
Saudi is, of course, the largst producer oil in the world and has the most to lose if we cut down our fossil fuel use, which is the main cause of GG emissions.
[quote]During the final session, the conference snagged over a sentence that said the impact of climate change already were being observed on every continent and in most oceans.[/quote]
the offending sentence was… (offending to governments, mind you, not to the scientists!)
[quote]There is very high confidence that many natural systems are being affected by regional climate changes, particularly temperature increases[/quote]
Governments (China) wanted to get rid of the word “very”. The scientists in charge of that section of the report refused. The US made a “compromise” to “delete any reference to confidence levels.
That doesn’t sound like a compromise to me! Sounds like a downright capitulation and watering down of the report.
And Canada is going to be front-and-center in this change.
The BBC has an excellent graphic half-way down their report showing the change in Arctic sea ice since 1980.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6532323.stm
I think it should be made clear that there is no reason to be overly depressed about these things. Yes, the world is changing. Yes, humans are largely responsible for it. But even if we fail to change our own ways quickly enough to avert short-term pain, and return the workings of Mother Earths to her own control, then we will adapt.
It may be a painful transition, but it will remind us that we are simply creatures of this Earth and we are far too small and insignificant to dare to be so arrogant, to think that we can forever dominate the Earth.
Here’s the report courtesy, the BBC:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/06_04_05_climate.pdf