| Topic: |
Politics > Politics-USA |
| User: |
"Captain Compassion" |
| Date: |
30 Nov 2007 10:02:12 AM |
| Object: |
What comes next for the IPCC? |
What comes next for the IPCC?
Now their fourth assessment is complete, should this climate-science
advisory panel change?
Jeff Tollefson
http://www.nature.com/news/2007/071129/full/news.2007.310.html
IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri is currently circulating a paper
discussing the IPCC's future. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change (IPCC) has produced four massive assessments of climate-change
science since 1990. Its efforts culminated this year in a summary
report that many argue delivers solid answers to the biggest questions
— whether and to what extent humans are contributing to global warming
— while laying a strong foundation for dealing with the possible
dangers and finding potential solutions. Now, some are beginning to
argue, it's time for the IPCC to change gear and alter the way it
works.
In a policy forum piece published today in Science 1, two scientists
argue that the IPCC must become a nimbler body if it is to remain
relevant in the coming years.
Until now, the IPCC has produced a set of reports over the course of a
year once every five or six years. But waiting until 2012 for another
summary report isn't an option, argues Frank Raes, a climate scientist
with the European Commission’s Institute for Environment and
Sustainability in Ispra, Italy, and one of two authors on the Science
commentary. “We cannot wait another five, seven years for an
assessment,” he says. “We have to act.” Action, he argues, will
require swifter input from the IPCC.
“Rather than just elucidating the climate problem, it’s got to be more
focused on solutions.”
Peter Cox
"It’s an open debate, and this is the right time to have it really,"
says Peter Cox, a climate modeller with the Met Office at the
University of Exeter, UK. "In some sense, we’ve taken step one of the
IPCC path, which is to demonstrate that climate change is an issue and
that it’s due to human activities." Step two, Cox says, is to
reorganize the process “from end to end” around adaptation and
mitigation. "Rather than just elucidating the climate problem, it’s
got to be more focused on solutions."
IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri is currently circulating a paper
discussing the panel's future and raising questions about structural
reforms - including whether there should be more targeted assessments
or fewer comprehensive assessments. He says he personally sees no need
for major changes. Major assessments on the order of five or six years
will remain useful, he says, while IPCC can respond to demand from
policy makers with targeted assessments as needed.
“We definitely need a larger social science dimension,” he says, as
well as more analysis of economic impacts of adaptation and
mitigation. “That’s my personal view, but I will be guided by what
governments want.”
Quick answers
Raes and colleague Rob Swart, who manages the European Topic Centre on
Air and Climate Change in Bilthoven, the Netherlands, suggest that the
IPCC consider the United Nations' acid-rain programme as a model. The
Convention on Long-Range Transboundary Air Pollution, which covers
Europe and North America, went through an initial period of broad
assessments on the science itself, Raes says, and then entered a
second stage that has brought together industry, environmentalists and
policy-makers to address specific policy questions.
Raes and Swart suggest that the IPCC do something similar. Although it
would remain a purely scientific body that doesn't give policy advice,
it could shift to providing specific information driven by policy
questions.
This might involve a reorganization of the panel. The IPCC currently
has one working group that assesses the basic science of global
warming, a second working on risks and adaptation, and a third
analysing mitigation options. That system could continue to provide
broad assessments on a longer timeline, Raes says, but policy
questions about how to treat biofuels and deforestation require a more
integrated approach.
Martin Parry, who co-chairs the IPCC's second working group, says
there is broad acknowledgement that faster, targeted assessments will
be needed. But he adds that there is still a role for a body that
produces broad scientific assessments independent of the policy
process. “I’m somewhat skeptical of integrated assessments,” Parry
says. “There’s something to be said for keeping the science assessment
clean and at a distance [from policy].”
Special reports
Few people question the idea that the IPCC will need to adjust its
sights, but some say a drastic overhaul of the organization might not
be necessary. Leonard Bernstein, an author of the fourth synthesis
report issued in Valencia, Spain, earlier this month, said the IPCC
already has a model for this in the way it handles “special reports”
on specific topics such as carbon sequestration and renewable
energies.
“If you use the special report model, it’s not even a matter of
adapting the IPCC,” Bernstein says, adding that special reports are
interdisciplinary and can be issued within a couple of years. “That
would make the process quicker, more flexible and more integrated
because these reports do cover policy, economics and technology.”
The IPCC could also shift its timing, such that one of the working
groups releases a report every two years, as opposed to all three
releasing simultaneous reports, says Cox. He says such a system would
allow each group to build on the latest work done by the other groups,
and would naturally encourage scientists in each group to help those
currently working on a report.
Pachauri says he hopes the IPCC's future can be discussed and
ultimately settled when the panel meets in April 2008, so the new
leadership has a "clear mandate" when it takes office in September
2008.
--
The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority but to
escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane. -- Marcus Aurelius
"...the whole world, including the United States, including all that
we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark
Age, made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights
of perverted science." -- Sir Winston Churchill
Joseph R. Darancette
daranc@NOSPAMcharter.net
.
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