The United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has just released a 21 page report summary for policy makers of a report entitled 'Climate Change 2007 - The Physical Science Basis' which will be released later in the year.
The report summary can be downloaded here: http://www.ipcc.ch/ .
The report summary has been the focus of intensive media interest for some days and according to the ABC has been described by WWF as a "clarion call to governments to act urgently to slash emissions" and by Greenpeace as a "screaming siren".
It is unclear from the associated media release when the full report will be made available.
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Changes to the text in this blog post were made about 10 minutes after I posted it. New text is underlined.
kb electronics
Yes Arnost I oscillate between the man with the cigar and that other well-known Bill. This is the first time I have noticed such deference at realclimate. Funny no-one seems to have noticed it (and good question too): on the other hand it was a long thread! I started on AGW seriously a couple of years ago and I recommend RC despite it being sometimes hard work. Better than wading thru all the rhetoric here.
Interesting Ian,
The responses do seem rather obsequious... "Thanks for stopping by Bill, its an honor etc ... - mike". You think it's the man with the cigar?
Arnost
Re reliability of realclimate as a source of information. See comments 96 and 120 on the thread for their item discussing AR4, by a certain "bill".Seems that some of us who respect this site are in good company.
Found what appears to me to be a good summary of the differences between TAR & AR4.
http://atoc.colorado.edu/~seand/headinacloud/index.php/2007/02/02/ipcc-spm-so-whats-new/
cheers
Arnost
Schiller - have you actually contemplated the opposite? Seems like the government pressure at SPM meeting was to water it down - see Paul Biggs comments on Fraser Institute thread.
Paul says" Philip Jones, of the University of East Anglia and a lead author of the IPCC report, said that the Chinese government had attempted to insist during the negotiations on the wording of the report that "some statements should be watered down". The US, by contrast, had been "fairly neutral" but China, which sent the biggest delegation of any country to the panel with 17 scientists, had been "obstructive". The Indian government, which has also been hostile to suggestions it should reduce emissions, had sent only one scientist to the meeting, he said.
--Fiona Harvey, Financial Times, 2 February 2007"
So I suggest you're getting a "we reluctantly" are prepared to let the following go through. You're getting a wtered down version perhaps - not a sexed-up version. It's the actual opposite of what you're saying. Perhaps if left without "minders" the scientists would have said something more severe ???
And you 99.98 appeal to our contribution as teensy weensy is simply IRRELEVANT and a ruse. Our demonstrated addition of raising teh atmospheric CO2 concentrations from 280 to 380ppm has a calculated impact based on the physical properties of the gas. Trying to make it sound puny is total sophistry.
Furthermore they are not "out of a job". That's b/s. The IPCC does not long term employ these people. The IPCC is more of a process than a coporation/organisation. Scientists often volunteer/nominate to give their services to the IPCC or are nominated as appropriate expert representatives. A few have stormed out - are they still employed - yep? Are contrarians still employed - yep? Who exactly has been sacked?
Your argument is a specious try-on and lacks any demonstrable foundation.
We look forward to you treating employees of GreenPeace and other environmental or activist NGOs with equivalent respect Schiller. Assume good faith and doing their job (as long it doesn\'t break the law or common decency whatever that is, is relative?, or go so far as to cause new laws to be enacted).
I would like to *clear the air,* as it were. All I meant to say is that scientists hired to support the efforts of the IPCC are employees, and should be expected to behave as employees.
If they don't behave as expected, they are out of a job and either stay quiet, or are called heretic "deniers."
It is also increasingly apparent that the SPM is composed by government delegates, and that the governments which hire the scientists expect those scientists to behave as employees.
Surely no-one here is so oblivious to the economic consequences of touting AGW that they would ignore the possibility that governments and certain individuals would have a pecuniary interest in the outcome. The carbon-trading scam, if it can be pulled off, could mean massive transfers of capital.
To be an employee does not mean one becomes dishonest. But those of us who are, or have been, employees, know that an employee is paid to *do the job.* Whatever that job is.
Government money does not make a person clean, and corporate money does not make a person dirty. Skip the ad homs and remember, 99.98 percent of the atmosphere is *not* CO2 from fossil fuels.
Des tell us how they're treating this ice mass in the AR4.
Did you notice these statements in the Summary for Policy Makers (at http://www.ipcc.ch/SPM2feb07.pdf ) :
"Current global model studies project that the Antarctic ice sheet will remain too cold for widespread surface melting and is expected to gain in mass due to increased snowfall." p13.
"If [melting] were sustained for millennia, that would lead to virtually complete elimination of the Greenland ice sheet..." p13.
So, if Antarctic ice mass (90% of global ice) is increasing, and Greenland will take thousands of years to melt, then that seems to be the end of the catastrophic sea level problem. I wonder why we aren't hearing about that?