IPCC 2012
A Reasonable Objective-An Unfortunate Emphasis
George M. Woodwell
The
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has been regularly attacked by
critics for representing the scientific community’s experience and data on the
global disruption of climate as a global problem. Their treatments of that
topic, however, have been scrupulously probing and objective despite the
obvious threats to human welfare. Their
objectivity has been guarded by scientists who in my view have weakened interpretations
of existing data, sometimes their own, and limited their presentations unnecessarily
to avoid criticism from more conservative scientists and from the political
right, ever poised to leap on any sign of opinion. The entire process of
publication is open to political review and criticism before publication,
further extinguishing any flicker of bias or opinion. The institution has done well in suppressing
judgments and presenting well-defended data. One of the effects of that highly
refined approach has been to limit
participants, excluding de facto potential scientific participants. Some
scientists of whom I am one, are alarmed by the consequences of changing
climates out from under all life. They are impatient and unwilling to concede
ignorance of consequences that are known to be real, however unpopular with others.
Eliminating such perspectives introduces
a clear bias never discussed.
A new
report appears in its title to abandon that carefully crafted objectivity.
“Managing The Risks of Extreme Events and Disaster to Advance Climate Change
Adaptation” can be interpreted as accepting the awkward but unfortunately
popular conclusion that nations can muddle through by accommodating the
climatic disruption…and the scientific community will help tell how. The report
itself does little to alter that impression offering as it does a clinical
dissection and interpretation of ‘risks’ in
500 page document. It might have been much more effective as well as
appropriate to avoid the suggestion of
“adaptation” as a policy and emphasize “mitigation’ of both cause and
effects throughout. Otherwise the merchants of poison appear to get all that
they want. Mitigation is in fact the
only realistic objective, for the disasters discussed are unacceptably multiplying
tragedies, however modulated in the dissection . A journalistic propensity for
a balanced treatment might lead to a discussion of what can now be done to
stabilize the composition of the atmosphere.
All nations have agreed to do so under the Framework Convention on
Climate Change of 1992, a very important treaty that was virtually universally
ratified and cannot be ignored. Such an analysis might reach even further to what
might be done to reverse the trend, however difficult and long-term that process
may be.
“Adaptation”
to accelerating continuous climatic disruption as a policy is optimism run
wild. Those advocating it set conditions that make it sound reasonable: ‘we
must accept the changes already induced and correct for them”; “we shall continue
to work to halt the trend and reverse it, but meanwhile, we must adapt”. Alas,
those palliatives are attractive but misleading. This document unfortunately
suggests the acceptance of a decision to allow the continued accumulation of
the tragedy. Such an acceptance would be a confession to the industrial world
that we shall continue on a suicidal course and the scientific community will
help. Surely, the IPCC can emerge with a more powerful statement of the most
serious disruption of life on earth short of social and political collapse into
universal war.
