Climate Panel's Third Report (IPCC)

Cross-posted from Booman Tribune

Regular readers of the Booman Tribune will have noted the series of reports being released by the Intragovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) during this spring.

The report of Working Group I covered the scientific aspects of the climate system and climate change and was released on 2 February 2007.
Contribution of Working Group I - Summary for Policymakers (pdf)

Working Group II released it's report on April 6; assessing the vulnerability of socio-economic and natural systems to climate change, negative and positive consequences of climate change, and options for adapting to it.
Working Group II - Summary for Policymakers (pdf)  Also see previous diary entry.

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The report of Working Group III on Mitigation of Climate Change was due to be released on May 4 in Bangkok.  However, The Guardian has obtained a copy of the draft summary report, allowing us some insight to what will be presented coming Friday.

Here is how The Guardian sums it up:

The summary of the new report, a draft of which has been obtained by the Guardian, says: "It is technically and economically feasible to stabilise greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere ... provided that incentives are in place to further develop and implement a range of mitigation technologies."

The knowledge and technology available to us today should enable us to limit the global temperature increase to 2-3 C, provided greenhouse-gas concentrations in the atmosphere is stabilizing within 454-534 parts per million by 2030.  That would require immediate and drastic action.

One of the most controversial findings of the report is likely to be its discussion of the various strategies international governments could take - the US has refused to adopt binding targets agreed under Kyoto and is resisting attempts to discuss a replacement, preferring voluntary agreements.

The draft report says such voluntary agreements are not effective, but it also raises questions about the success of Kyoto-style treaties based on targets and carbon trading. It says the best approach is to tie development to investment in clean technology.

Catherine Pearce, international climate campaigner with Friends of the Earth, said: "We hope that this report will push governments to take action, by demonstrating that the policies, measures and sustainable energy technologies are readily available. We have no time to lose, and no excuses for further inaction."

Check out the entire article!  Of course, we do recall that the previous report ended up heavily politicized:

CNN - Several scientists objected to the editing of the final draft by government negotiators but in the end agreed to compromises. However, some scientists vowed never to take part in the process again.

    The climax of five days of negotiations was reached when the delegates removed parts of a key chart highlighting devastating effects of climate change that kick in with every rise of 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit, and in a tussle over the level of scientific reliability attached to key statements.

No doubt, this is a busy week of negotiations in Bangkok, hopefully, we will get a final report which is scientifically sound.  We cannot afford political games and stalling tactics any longer.  The time for action is now!

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•  Try this Quiz

  Ecological Footprint Quiz.

  It may be an eyeopener.

  by ask on Sun Apr 29, 2007 at 10:19:11 AM PDT

  •  well, that was somewhat entertaining

    CATEGORY   ACRES
    FOOD            4.2
    MOBILITY 0.2
    SHELTER 5.7 (apartment building)
    GOODS/SERVICES 4
    TOTAL FOOTPRINT 14

    IN COMPARISON, THE AVERAGE ECOLOGICAL FOOTPRINT IN YOUR COUNTRY IS 24 ACRES PER PERSON.

    WORLDWIDE, THERE EXIST 4.5 BIOLOGICALLY PRODUCTIVE ACRES PER PERSON.

    IF EVERYONE LIVED LIKE YOU, WE WOULD NEED 3.2 PLANETS.
    -------------
    survey methodology aside, i think i still prefer $$ and CO2 metrics per person to communicate how lifestyle diminishes lifestyle.

    by MarketTrustee on Sun Apr 29, 2007 at 10:47:00 AM PDT

•  Yes, but for those who know stuff

  when are they going to actually release the Technical background documents?

  Getting the Executive Summaries dribbled out one at a time is purely political and doesn't help scientists who want to see the full report.  

  by captainlaser on Sun Apr 29, 2007 at 10:27:54 AM PDT

  •  Sorry, can't help you

    I've also been unsuccessful in locating the full reports.  Maybe only after the final synthesis report is released in November?

    by ask on Sun Apr 29, 2007 at 10:52:07 AM PDT

•  Top ten ways to slow global warming

  Our one and only planet is heating up, fast. CO2 burned 200 years ago is still lingering up above us, warming the planet, compounded every day by still increasing tonnage that won't go away for a thousand years, melting ice caps and glaciers, heating and acidifying oceans, decimating phytoplankton that grows best in cold water, removing the foundations of Earth's entire biotic ecosystem, from crab larvae to terrestrial mammals like us. The bountiful oceans have been strip-mined and are now losing their ability to grow back.
  Sea levels are rising. According to an IPCC climatologist on realclimate.org

  "59 cm (23 inches by 2095) is unfortunately not the "worst case". It does not include the full ice sheet uncertainty, which could add 20 cm or even more. It does not cover the full "likely" temperature range given in the AR4 (up to 6.4 ºC) – correcting for that could again roughly add 15 cm. It does not account for the fact that past sea level rise is underestimated by the models for reasons that are unclear. Considering these issues, a sea level rise exceeding one metre can in my view by no means ruled out. Greenland ice is good for 7 metres and the WAIS for 6 metres of sea level rise. 20 feet is about 6 metres so either ice sheet alone, or half of each, could lead to a 20 feet rise."

  A blogger points out that: "The rise will continue rising and there is no possibility for the sea rise to retreat....not in centuries or longer."
  These rising waters will soon, in coming years, not decades, wipe out massive human populations (The low countries, northern Europe and especially Bangladesh, come to mind, but coastal communities everywhere will be flooded) while disrupting the most productive tidal nurseries needed for life in both land and sea.
  Droughts are already drying up wide swaths of tropical and temperate latitudes, where most of Earth's 6,708,290,000 humans live, (on 04/30/07). That's at least three times, and probably ten times, the number of people this planet can support for more than one or two generations, and land surface suitable for human habitation is rapidly shrinking. See E.O Wilson on Acting now to save life on Earth. Rising seas, droughts and floods will push 100's of millions, maybe billions, of surviving refugees to ever-shrinking higher, greener ground, overwhelming those habitats and inhabitants, the stores, schools, hospitals, and criminal justice systems, creating lawless gang warfare and warlords dominating the daily lives of survivors. It's gonna be bleak. Public awareness of the realities of global warming is ramping up every day, but we're still deep in the darkness of denial about what's really starting to happen

  So here, for all leaders and citizens alike all around this imperiled planet, by the wonders of global internet broadcasting, are the top ten things that truly will need to be accomplished while we still have functioning societies, that should have been started generations ago, if we desire to keep our lives tolerable and intact:

  1) Stop having so many wars. Wars, and the buildup for wars, burn more oil and create more CO2 than any other single human endeavor. As resources become harder to find, the tendency will be to start more wars, but if we can stop having wars now, and accomplish the other nine items on this list, we won't consume nearly as much of Earth's natural resources, so we won't be so tempted to start wars. Wars also justify the entire military/industrial complex, which directly and indirectly burns oil without reflection on the consequences, by the millions of barrels daily. Wars are interactions - "they" say or do something bad, like own a resource we think should be ours, or we think they did, so "we" answer with something bad toward them, and the spiral descends into uncontrollable war. We need a better way to respond and interact with each other, a new modus operandi in our society and government, new philosophies at colleges and think tanks, new conversations everywhere, etc. That's impossible, you say? OK then, welcome to the world of Mad Max Mutual Murder worldwide. Or, we can change our ways and get along, if we try.

  2) Stop having so many babies. This is also contrary to our habits and customs known as "human nature," but let's face it, one way or another the human race is about to be drastically reduced. It's far better to take some control over our sheer numbers by reducing births rather than by increasing deaths. We need an international resolve to distribute clear educational truth on the realities of global warming and overpopulation, and condoms and IUDs, etc. on every streetcorner, and in every school, tea room and post office, worldwide.

  3) Stop traveling so much. Overconsumption of resources leads to global warming and wars, so we'll need to radically reduce our travels in every way possible. Games, concerts, vacations, family visits, conferences, weekend getaways, and other important occasions, need to be severely reduced, worldwide. Like almost everything else on this list, we're talking about major personal and economic disruptions, with lots of people out of work while transitions are made to resettle into more integrated communities with our families and our daily needs close by. Hard to imagine? So is Mad Max.

  4) De-throne the corporate rulers. When you've got the political muscle, you don't have to make sense, apparently. We need to see some investigation into exactly who is orchestrating the campaigns to lie about global warming to sell oil, who is pushing unnecessary drugs on people, who is poisoning the Earth with pesticides, who is weakening the will of the people to have livable, logical societies by corrupting our democracies. Of course we have their chosen political officers like Cheney and Bush, and the lobbyists and the "industry reps," but behind them have to be actual individuals with names and faces, who own the industries, or own the investment groups that own the industries, who hand down their wishes through boards and CEOs, who hire think tanks, media conglomerates and PR firms who hire lobbyists who then say they represent "the industry." They proclaim their faith in Reaganite simplicity: "Government is bad, taxes are bad, corporations are good." "For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong. --H. L. Mencken
  I'd like to pull back the curtain and see exactly who is shaping the campaigns to overpower elected officials and shape the consciousness of the public to accept their faulty, simplistic logic. I think we need a public conversation with these individuals. They have a big influence on our lives and our future, and yet they're just people like the rest of us, once we can see them and talk to them.
  Who are they? They have a big influence on our lives and our future. I want names, faces, bios and contact information. Who set up the think tanks and endowed positions that spew out the pundits that are nothing but loyal team players who have no standards of truth to fall back on, but only allegiance to the captain and to making the scores and claiming moral superiority over the other team? Who does Rupert Murdoch, for instance, have dinner with, meet at the club, go hunting with? The campaign to declare that global warming is a hoax perpetrated by corrupt scientists and greedy environmentalists was not just spontaneously concocted by Sean, Rush and Glenn Beck, to name a few. These hired guns were carefully taught to tell such preposterous lies by....who? These lies are immensely damaging to the consensus we all desperately need if we are to change our lifestyles rapidly, and for the major industries to take seriously the increasingly obvious threats of global warming, or we will indeed cook in our own exhaust fumes. It's as if we're all on a train that is headed over a cliff, and some of us see the danger, but we can't get the engineer to stop or turn, because the crowd in the club car are laughing at us and calling us kooks, in an orchestrated, coordinated fashion, like a trained choir. Who trained them?

  5) Return to simple pleasures, like playing music, making love (using birth control), reading and writing, drinking beer, smoking grass, bird-watching, woods-walking, wood-carving, knitting, yoga, jogging, card-playing, story-telling and listening, rowing, swimming, walking the dog, visiting friends and old folks for no good reason. These are the positives that have been mostly lost due to wars, over-population, over-consumption, social fragmentation and alienation, and obedience to corporate masters.

  6) Conserve power.  Buy and use florescent light bulbs, low-power appliances. Use less water, replant lawns with gardens or native ground cover, etc. Enjoy the sounds of nature and the natural relaxation of darkness. Recycle, re-use, reduce. Obvious, I know.

  7) Find locally grown food, building material and everything else as much as possible. Corporate agriculture and those container ships and trucks bringing cheap goods (such as polluted pet food) from far away places, like Mexico and China, are destroying the air, the climate, and our health. Again, there will be personal and economic disruption, worldwide, while we make transitions, but we have no other choice.

  8) Use wind and solar power for homes, industries, businesses, offices and public buildings, every chance you get. This should be politically mandated and demanded by consumers.

  9) Demand inexpensive, plug-in biodiesel hybrid cars, and get as few of them as possible and use them as little as possible. Walk or ride bicycles whenever possible, which also provides strength and vitality and reduces health care costs.

  10) Support Earth-bound politicians, organizations, businesses, teachers, friends and relatives, and avoid religions and philosophies that degrade Earth in favor of any supernatural heaven or afterlife. We won't know what's after life until we get there, but our life, and all life, on Earth is too important to let it burn up in our own exhaust fumes, toxic chemicals, radioactivity, etc.

  I’m sure others can think of additions to these ten items, but before we can do these things in a scale to meet the effects of global warming, we'll need to talk about them.

  by howardfromUSA on Sun Apr 29, 2007 at 10:57:29 AM PDT