Environment

IPCC Report: Global Warming is Certain and Man-made

By Dweep Chanana ⋅ January 20, 2007 ⋅  Email this post ⋅  Print This Post ⋅ Post a comment

The Toronto Star is reporting on the upcoming 4th report of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). It says this IPCC report will place the burden of global warming fairly squarely on humanity:

The report, to be released in Paris Feb. 2, should all but end any debate on climate change and compel governments and industries to take urgent measures to deal with it, scientists say.

“It is very likely that (man-made) greenhouse gas increases caused most of the globally average temperature increases since the mid-20th century,” states the report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

If this is true it will be a significant change from previous international research on global warming. Despite much money and time being spent to understand climate change, scientists remain conflicted about the certainty of global warming. And given the politics of the issue, past IPCC reports have been somewhat ambiguous about its consequences and causes.

Almost simultaneously, CommonDreams reports (via Guardian) that carbon levels have surged in the past few years.

Carbon dioxide is accumulating in the atmosphere much faster than scientists expected, raising fears that humankind may have less time to tackle climate change than previously thought.

If the IPCC report does recommend, unambiguously, that countries act urgently to prevent global warming it will be not a moment too late. Climate change is still, admittedly a poorly understood phenomena. The risk, however, is that we don’t understand it at our peril.

Just as global dimming worked to reduce global warming, other feedback loops now may reinforce global warming. As pointed out by CommonDreams:

Peter Cox, a climate change expert at Exeter University, said: ” The concern is that climate change itself will affect the ability of the land to absorb our emissions.” At the moment around half of human carbon emissions are reabsorbed by nature but the fear among scientists is that increasing temperatures will work to reduce this effect.

Whatever the science, there is far too much at stake to do nothing or to let the status quo degenerate naturally. And while those in the developed world, that have caused global warming, will escape with a few billion dollars in damages to manage the climate change, those in the developing world – particularly Africa and Asia – will simply perish.