The UN and Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's delegates in Stockholm unloaded their summary report this morning on the body's 5th assessment of climate change and its impacts and reasons. As posts over the last few days have noted, it has few surprises. But it is getting heavy and largely serious coverage. I cannot possibly read all out there, or even read those I do read with notable inside or wit. Therefore …..
Small sampling though it be, let's get to it.
Stories:
- The Economist – Babbage blog (no byline, as usual at T.E.): It's still our fault ; A heady, discursive, occasionally dismissive but mostly hard-headed essay and contemplation on the IPCC's purpose and the facts as science sees them.
- NYTimes – Justin Gillis: UN Climate Panel endorses Ceiling on Global Emissions ; Hurray, a headline that jumps on one tidbit by which the events in Stockholm advanced the ball. Most of the story is a general take on the overall report. The tidbit is not so tiddly either : the IPCC endorses one trillion metric tons of fossil carbon as the upper limit to mankind's greenhouse gas load on the atmosphere, and we're more than halfway through this allotment already. Dot Earth's Andrew C. Revkin has two posts up: Climate Panel's Fifth Report Clarifies Humanity's Choices, and Why More Climate Science Hasn't Led to More Climate Polity – Yet; Andy toots his horn, justifiably, for recognizing in 1988 that what was then called the Third World will be exceedingly reluctant to skip over the fossil-fuel phase of industrial development and will thus make fossil carbon a tough beast to tame.
- Washington Post – Darryl Fears: IPCC report says humans almost certainly cause global warming ; Fears runs through the reliable sources, then closes with TV weatherman and blogging climate skeptic Anthony Watts.
- BBC – Matt McGrath: IPCC climate report: humans 'dominant cause' of warming ; McGrath ignores the recent buzz that these big IPCC pronouncements haven't the punch, novelty, or general news value they once had. The lede acclaims it as a 'landmark report.' This is straight news reporting, providing at the top the description and gravity that the IPCC wants for it. Such as this punchy quote from a top member of the panel in Stockholm: Climate change "challenges the two primary resources of humans and ecoystems, land and water. In short, it threatens our planet, our only home." And the tendency of comments to the story to be ignorant and snarky is fodder for those who think it's time to shutter the wide-open comment doors at science news outlets (see Paul Raeburn's post today on The LeBarre Manifesto).
- Reuters – Alister Doyle, Simon Johnson: Scientists more convinced mankind is main cause of warming ;
- AP – Karl Ritter: Climate panel: warming "extremely likely' man-made ;
- Time Magazine – Bryan Walsh: Climate Scientists Issue Their Report. Now It's Our Turn ; No surprises, as he says. But a sensible essay he writes nonetheless.
- Guardian (UK) Damian Carrington, John Vidal: IPCC climate report: the digested read; Lots of numbers, well selected, declaratively presented. It says here that 95 percent chance that human activity has been and will continue changing climate means it is extremely likely we're on the hook. Yesterday, the Guardian's Fiona Harvey provided a last-moment curtain raiser, "Global Warming likely to breach 2C threshold,climate scientists conclude."
- Telegraph (UK) Lucy Kinder: Climate change report: what does it mean for you? ; A lot of skeptical magpies roost at the Telegraph, but Kinder handles the news straight, albeit with a narrow lens. Other pieces out yesterday and today in the Telegraph include Richard Gary, Nick Collins: IPCC report: Britain could cool if Gulf Stream slows ; Conrad Quilty-Harper, Richard Gray: IPCC report: the temperature 'pause" explained, with big graphics. And now, just because this IS the Telegraph: Christopher Booker: The ice is not melting, yet still the scaremongers blunder on/ The real global warming disaster: green taxes, a suicidal energy policy and wasting billions on useless windmills; and on video, the incomparable James Delingpole: IPCC report: global warming theory is 'junk science' ; plus Rosa Silverman, Matthew Payton: IPCC report is 'full of hocus pocus science', claim sceptics ;
Grist for the Mill: IPCC Press Release ; IPCC Summary for Policymakers ;
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