 There has been increased debate over the authenticity of a report by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). That report provided much of the basis for efforts to control CO2, the alleged cause of global climate change. The Associated Press reports that the group agreed recently to an independent analysis of the United Nations' Nobel Prize-winning global warming panel.
"We enter this process with no preconceived conclusions," said Robbert Dijkgraaf, a Dutch mathematical physicist who co-chairs the group, the InterAcademy Council of 15 nations' national academies of science.
The decision to launch the inquiry comes as other scientists are raising questions. Science News reports that a group of science luminaries met on February 20 including included Ralph Cicerone, president of the National Academy of Sciences; James McCarthy, a Harvard climate scientist and chairman of the board of directors of the American Association for the Advancement of Science; Nobel Prize winner Phillip Sharp of MIT, who co-chaired the NAS report last year: “Ensuring the Integrity, Accessibility, and Stewardship of Research Data in the Digital Age;” and Astronomer Royal Martin Rees, President of Britain’s Royal Society.
The Associated Press reported that the panel believes no errors were apparent in the earlier reports, saying that "the physics of a warming atmosphere and rising seas is man-made and incontrovertible." The AP notes other mistakes have been founded in the second of the four climate research reports produced in 2007, primarily because the UN body used government or advocacy group reports instead of peer-reviewed research.
The AP writes that there were five errors in the Asian chapter in the UN report in a single entry on glaciers in Himalayas. That report indictaed that those "glaciers would disappear by 2035 — hundreds of years earlier than other information suggests — with no research backing it up. A sentence in the chapter on Europe says 55 percent of the Netherlands is below sea level, when it's really about half that amount."
U.S. Climate Policy - The United States Congress has been debating various measures to reduce CO2 emissions, proposals that may now be in jeopardy as more revelations about possible inaccuracy are revealed. Click here for additional AnalysisOnline reports on climate change.
Controlling CO2 Emissions - Efforts to reduce CO2 emissions to curb global warming have experienced significant setbacks. First the Financial Times of London reported that the timetable to reach a global agreement on climate change has been reportedly shelved after the UN waived the first deadline of the process laid out at December's emotional Copenhagen summit. Click here to read more on AO.
Problems in Copenhagen - Climate change advocates appeared to have lost ground at the Copenhagen Accord last December, reached by the United States and developing nations China, India, Brazil, and South Africa. The Wall Street Journal reports that tough negotiations were deferred until later and a proposed 50 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 was removed. Click here to read more on AO.
Bottomline - It's the science behind climate change that must be evaluated. Rhetoric and political expediency are obstacles in the path of addressing one of the world's greatest challenges.
|
