Doomsday is Here

That bastion of intellectualism, the United Nations, has just reiterated that the sky is in fact falling.

In its final and most powerful report, a United Nations panel of scientists meeting here describes the mounting risks of climate change in language that is both more specific and forceful than its previous assessments, according to scientists here.

Hopefully Spielberg will do a movie on this.

As a sign of the deepening urgency surrounding the climate change issue, the report, which was being printed Friday night, will be officially released by Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Saturday.

“This document goes further than any of the previous efforts,” said Hans Verolme, director of the World Wildlife Fund’s Global Climate Change Program. “The pressure has been palpable — people know they are delivering a document that will be cited for years to come and will define policy.”

Is it too much to ask that the policy defined is the elimination of the UN?

Even though the synthesis report is more alarming than its predecessors, some researchers believe that it still understates the trajectory of global warming and its impact. The I.P.C.C.’s scientific process, which takes five years of study and writing from start to finish, cannot take into account the very latest data on climate change or economic trends, which show larger than predicted development and energy use in China.

“The world is already at or above the worst case scenarios in terms of emissions,” said Gernot Klepper, of the Kiel Institute for World Economy in Kiel, Germany. “In terms of emissions, we are moving past the most pessimistic estimates of the I.P.C.C., and by some estimates we are above that red line.”

Oh, I bet we can do a lot worse by emissions that our present output. Environmentalism is a reasonable concept to discuss. All things considered, China is a cesspool that needs to be cleaned up. Not because the ozone can't handle it, but because people can't. And it's nice to have clean air and clean water.

Why do we have to give credence to a bunch of nuts from 130 countries when we can have a civilized conversation about how to make things better. Why would anyone listen to anything Sudan and Pakistan have to say about anything, much less the environment. I can't believe the madrassas excel in the sciences.

Likewise, a recent International Energy Agency report looking at the unexpectedly rapid emissions growth in China and India estimated that if current policies were not changed the world would warm six degrees by 2030, a disastrous increase far higher than the panel’s estimates of one to four degrees by the end of the century.

Because 4 degrees wasn't enough to get everyone to sign on to Kyoto, they have to ramp it up to 6 degrees. At that point, Mt. Everest will be underwater.

"In my view that would make it not just difficult, but impossible to adapt successfully, some of my colleagues would say catastrophic,” said Dr. Oppenheimer. “If they say that it’s possible that melting could occur in centuries leading to meters of change, that’s a headline.”

This final report also puts more emphasis on the ripple effect of small degrees of temperature change, some of which are already being seen, such as species extinctions and loss of biodiversity.

“A relatively modest degree of warming — one to three degrees — spells a lot of trouble and I think that was not clear in the previous report,” Dr. Oppenheimer said. He said part of the reason for the lack of clarity was that governments had “messed around” with the language and structure of the report during the approval process.

This time around, the consequences of different degrees of climate change will be better laid out so that the ministers who meet in Bali next month will understand the options and the consequences of inaction. “This should light a fire under policy makers,” Dr. Oppenheimer said.

I doubt it. If you think 98% of those 130 countries' policymakers will do anything more than complain about the US, you are in for a surprise. That's the only thing that comes out of these "summits". One or two stupid countries sign on (see New Zealand) and go broke trying to make it work and the rest of them point their fingers at us. At least it will give Gore something to crow about for a while.