By Barbara Kessler
Green Right Now
OK, I admit, I didn’t want to wade into this slush.
I was aware, as most of you no doubt are, that the IPCC (that’s the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) has been caught in a few mistakes recently. And I was concerned, because we reporters rely on the IPCC’s reports — especially that last one from 2007. The one that many scientists believe underestimates what will happen with climate change. We rely on it because it’s based on the efforts of hundreds of peer-reviewed reports by scientists around the world and it’s widely considered to be the best forecast we have of what climate change might bring.
Of course, I had trouble hearing myself think in the din of cheers from climate skeptics, who were already reveling in record snows in the U.S. (The naysayers conveniently ignore that extreme weather patterns are predicted by global-warming models.) They shout from the stands, as though this were a junior high wrestling match instead of a serious discussion of what’s true or not, or reasonable to believe, about the future of the planet.
I mean, a little gravitas would have been nice.
We did get a serious response from chief climate skeptic U.S. Sen. James Inhofe, (around the same time his family was building an igloo to taunt Al Gore).
Inhofe on the Senate floor: “The ramifications of the IPCC [problems] spread far and wide, most notably to the Environmental Protection Agency’s finding that greenhouse gases from mobile sources endanger public health and welfare. EPA’s finding rests in large measure on the IPCC’s conclusions-and EPA has accepted them wholesale, without an independent assessment.”
His criticism seems fair, actually. If the EPA were relying just on the IPCC for its conclusions that greenhouse gases are dangerous, then we’ve got a problem.
Except it isn’t. The agency does turn frequently to the IPCC report, because it’s the big compendium on the topic, composed by a worldwide network of top scientists, who aren’t all of one mind, who are fallible, yes, but have been working for decades to put various pieces together. The IPCC experts are studying everything from the bleaching coral in the acidifying Pacific to the speed of glaciers breaking off in Greenland.
The EPA’s State of the Knowledge report to the public indeed leans heavily on IPCC findings. But its discussion of the Health and Environmental Effects of Climate Change points to our own U.S. agencies that monitor the weather and the nation’s natural resources. Much of this info is gathered together by the U.S. Global Change Research Program. (Which is worth checking out if you want to know more. You’ll be reassured that scientists and policymakers are trying to tease out what’s true, what’s likely and what’s less likely to transpire with climate change.)
As my teenagers would say, the EPA staff are not idiots, they know they need multiple sources.
But back to the IPCC. Without rehashing everything that’s gone on, it is clear that mistakes have been made.
Here’s a look at one of them: In its 2007 report the IPCC says the Himalayan glaciers could vanish by 2035. The IPCC drew that information from a World Wildlife Fund report, which had relied on another report — that had inaccurately cited yet another report, which was in hieroglyphics.
I’m kidding about the hieroglyphics. The reports don’t go back quite that far.
The bottom line: You could barely follow the chain of custody here, let alone find the solid science calculating that the Himalayan glaciers would be gone by 2035. It was, in the end, speculation. And more than a few someones were lazy in vetting this information at WWF and the IPCC. (Read the WWF’s explanation for more detail.)
So what is the truth? According to one peer-reviewed report, the Himalayan glaciers are losing mass, which could be very bad for the half billion people who depend on them for water.
And this is most likely (some would say almost certainly) caused by climate change, and also possibly soot from little cooking stoves used in that part of the world.
The climate change, by the way, is most likely caused by human-created carbon emissions.
At what point does this science become fact? When the weight of the science shows — even despite some missteps, a few jealous colleagues withholding evidence, occasional hyperbole and a few related bugs and warts — that climate change is happening.
I was convinced awhile back. I think the IPCC’s failings are worrisome. But I understand that science is a process — steered by humans. At some point, we need to jump, and run with the solutions. While we can.
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