UN report reduces human impact - a bit.
The UK’s Telegraph is saying UN downgrades man’s impact on the climate.
The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says there can be little doubt that humans are responsible for warming the planet, but the organisation has reduced its overall estimate of this effect by 25 per cent.
In a final draft of its fourth assessment report, to be published in February, the panel reports that the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has accelerated in the past five years. It also predicts that temperatures will rise by up to 4.5 C during the next 100 years, bringing more frequent heat waves and storms.
Climate change sceptics are expected to seize on the revised figures as evidence that action to combat global warming is less urgent.
It’s funny how these same sceptics have been slamming the IPCC as being biased and unscientific and so forth, but as soon as they make the slightest correction, an entirely reasonable thing to do given the increasing ceertainty of the data available, then they are laud this as proof that there is no cause for alarm. However the article goes on to add:
The report paints a bleak picture for future generations unless greenhouse gas emissions are reduced. It predicts that the climate will warm by 0.2 C a decade for the next two decades if emissions continue at current levels.
It’s great that the problem is perhaps not as bad as the worst case scenario, but the problem is still a clear and present danger to us, our way of life and the very planet we live on. To take this adjustment as an excuse to stop caring about the problem is both belligerent and myopic. — DS
Technorati Tags: climate change, global warming, IPCC, politics
