Science and politics

The latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, which brings into even sharper focus the potential effects of climate change, has been approved - but only after some of most significant dangers were cut out or minimized as politics were put ahead of science:

An international global warming conference approved a report on climate change Friday, chairman Rajendra Pachauri said, after a contentious marathon session that saw angry exchanges between diplomats and scientists who drafted the report...

“The authors lost,” said one participant. “A lot of authors are not going to engage in the IPCC process any more. I have had it with them,” he said on condition of anonymity because the proceedings were supposed to remain confidential. An Associated Press reporter, however, witnessed part of the final meeting.

The climax of five days of negotiations was reached when the delegates removed parts of a key chart highlighting devastating effects of climate change that kick in with every rise of 1 degree Celsius, and in a tussle over the level of confidence attached to key statements.

The United States, China and Saudi Arabia raised the most objections to the phrasing, most often seeking to tone the certainty of some of the more dire projections.

The final report is the clearest and most comprehensive scientific statement to date on the impact of global warming mainly caused by man-induced carbon dioxide pollution.

It predicts that up to 30 per cent of species face an increase (sic) risk of extinction if global temperatures rise 2 degrees Celsius above the average in the 1980s and 90s.

In other words, never mind privatizing the "highway to extinction"; instead, the U.S. and others apparently managed to have that route removed from the map entirely. Which only means that there'll be less way to determine where'll we end up if the anti-environment faction manages to keep us on that road.

In the longer term, we'll have to hope that the scientists who are now rightfully frustrated with having their work rewritten by political hacks will decide not to abandon the IPCC as a result - lest the same type of anti-science hack write the next set of reports from the beginning.

For now, though, the report should show that even the most irresponsible countries are no longer willing to pretend that climate change is anything but a serious problem which demands immediate action. And if the report helps to spur that kind of action forward, then its specific wording may be secondary to the good it can do to shape the political scene.