Scientists Detail Climate Changes, Poles to Tropics

I kind of dropped the ball on the next report from the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which came out on Friday. This article details the effects of global warming that we're heading towards in the near future and the changes that are already taking place. The scientific evidence in this report could serve as a powerful reminder to governments, especially the U.S., that better environmental policies need to be put in place -- this is something every country in the world needs to cooperate on.

And it seems that representatives from the U.S. are beginning to agree:

The conclusions came after four days of revisions by scientists and then an often rancorous all-night debate with government officials. In a sign of shifting geopolitics on global warming, scientists who worked on the report criticized China for weakening some language in the summary, while they credited the United States, which had for years stressed uncertainty in the science, with playing a mostly constructive role.

Yet, as always, I express concern over governments playing any role in the editing of these kind of reports, and the article does address the problems that come of this.

Under pressure from nations including Russia, China and Saudi Arabia, the authors said, sections on coral damage and tropical storms were softened in the summary. They also got the authors to drop parts of an illustration showing how different emissions policies might limit damage. Officials from those countries argued that data in the report did not support the level of certainty expressed in the final draft.

But some authors were not assuaged. The final document was “much less quantified and much vaguer and much less striking than it could have been,” said Stéphane Hallegatte, a participant from France’s International Center for Research on the Environment and Development.

I know, it is only the summary is what has been edited by this group, but how many people will have access to, and will actually read, the 1,572 page report?