Read more: 鈥�IPCC 2013: The latest state of the climate report鈥�
THE latest scientific report from the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, published last week, was received almost with a shrug. There were no real showstoppers (no surprise, as most of the report had been leaked in advance). Minds were not changed. Battle lines did not budge. Denialists tried to rubbish the report but found themselves preaching only to the converted.
Perhaps the juiciest morsel was the IPCC鈥檚 acceptance that warming has slowed since 1998 (see 鈥�Climate report: Lull in warming doesn鈥檛 mean we鈥檙e safe鈥�). Even this has been widely studied and debated elsewhere; the IPCC simply reiterated that the change can be explained as part of the complex interactions between natural and human-made climate effects, with the big picture unchanged. The report is the product of painstaking consensus-building; it is inevitably not cutting-edge.
Advertisement
That is not to say the science is 鈥渟ettled鈥�. Science never is. Many uncertainties and complexities remain to be understood, but the chances that we will discover that we have got the big picture wrong are diminishing day by day. The work of climate scientists is now to fill in ever-finer details. So why are we still so uncertain what the future holds?
聯The chances of discovering that we have got the big picture wrong are diminishing day by day聰
The greatest source of uncertainty is not science, but society: the IPCC鈥檚 declaration that the world will warm by anywhere between 0.3 and 4.8聽掳C reflects social and political uncertainties, not scientific ones.Climate scientists study the climate. They cannot tell us how much money will be invested in green energy R&D, whether fertility rates will go up or down, whether we will dig up all the remaining fossil fuels and burn them, or the outcomes of numerous other decisions that affect the atmosphere 鈥� though they can tell us what will probably happen if we do or don鈥檛 take them (see 鈥�Earth, 2100 AD: Four futures of environment and society鈥�).
And so attention must now turn to the next two IPCC reports. The first of these, due out in March 2014, will cover impacts, adaptation and vulnerability; the second, out the following month, will cover mitigation.
As yet there are no leaks from these reports. They are likely to develop the theme that the future is still in our hands. We can choose to limit warming, or continue our carbon bender and take our chances in a world that is around 5聽掳C hotter. It鈥檚 up to us.
This article appeared in print under the headline 鈥淭he world is in our hands鈥�
