The big news is the release of the fourth and final report from the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Looking around at the media coverage I find dramatic statements and ominous quotes.
From The Independent…
Humanity is rapidly turning the seas acid through the same pollution that causes global warming, the world’s governments and top scientists agreed yesterday. The process – thought to be the most profound change in the chemistry of the oceans for 20 million years – is expected both to disrupt the entire web of life of the oceans and to make climate change worse.
From MyWay…
“Only urgent, global action will do,” said U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, calling on the United States and China - the world’s two biggest polluters - to do more to slow global climate change.
“I look forward to seeing the U.S. and China playing a more constructive role,” Ban told reporters. “Both countries can lead in their own way.”
“These scenes are as frightening as a science fiction movie,” said Ban. “But they are even more terrifying because they are real.”
From the N.Y. Times…
One such area is the future melting of ice sheets in Greenland and western Antarctica. In earlier reports, the panel’s scientists acknowledged that their computer models were poor at such predictions, and did not reflect the rapid melting that scientists have recently observed. If these areas melt entirely, seas would rise 40 feet, scientists said. While scientists are certain that the sheets will melt over millennia, producing sea-level rises, there is now evidence to suggest that it could happen much faster than this, perhaps over centuries.
If you look around, every major news outlet has a take on this IPCC report.
I have had a bit of experience reading scholarly documents, reports, contracts; the kind of stuff people usually gloss over because, it seems like they are purposely written to confound.
The fact is, I generally don’t trust journalists to read these things for me and tell me what they say. It’s kind of like interpretations of the Bible. Everybody who reads it is going to get something else out of it. And, like the Bible, I don’t think that a lot of the people who talk about it have read the whole thing.
So, it’s Sunday afternoon and all weekend I have been exposed to histrionic reactions and interpretations of this, purportedly, extremely important report. I have a few hours and I want to see the report with my own eyes and decipher it with my own mind.
I go straight to the source, the official website of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Expecting to find the serious business at hand, I am instead greeted by this cheerful message.
The Nobel Peace Prize goes to the IPCC!
Oslo, 12 Oct 07 - The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and Albert Arnold (Al) Gore Jr. were awarded of the Nobel Peace Prize “for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change”.
Alongside is this photo.
What is he so happy about? What are they so happy about? Screw the Nobel prize, haven’t they seen the news?
The report is not released yet and not available on the website.
Seems like something this important, this vital should be available to the un-washed masses at the same time it is released to a bunch of tabloid scribes whose job it is to summarize with an emphasis on shock value.
I wonder why that is. Are they just looking out for us? Do they think we are to stupid to read the thing on our own?
Or, is this possibly more of the new age of publicity, using the media as a marketing tool.
Mr President wrote,
The reports from the three working groups are here :
http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/assessments-reports.htm
They’ve been there forever though and I’ve read them already. What those media reports are allegedly reporting is the fourth report, the Synthesis Report which ties it all together.
Whilst there’s a summery of it, the full version is nowhere to be seen. This is where my issue with those who say the debate over Climate Change is over arises. Although they make bold statements like that they seem to be spreading disinformation. It’s so rare that we see actual data rather than editorialised spin.
If you want the summary it’s here but I don’t trust summaries:
http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/syr/ar4_syr_spm.pdf
Mr President’s last blog post..Textual’s Twitter Take Part II
Link | November 20th, 2007 at 3:45 pm
Pribek wrote,
I’m not much into summaries either, Pres.
“What those media reports are allegedly reporting is the fourth report, the Synthesis Report which ties it all together.”
Allegedly, seems to be the operative word there. Is this reportage coming from a summary or the full report?
Most of what I’ve seen from the media either implies or, flat out states, that this fourth report offers up new information that is far more dire than what we have seen before. The implication being that it is more than the advertised synthesis of the first three.
Link | November 20th, 2007 at 5:06 pm