This trail is a history of the IPCC whose work touches every person in the international community. It will take the reader from its beginings in 1988 to the future it is tasked to protect and will show both the trimuphs and the controversies along the way. Enjoy.
Summary: http://trailfire.com/jasonja/trailview/96512
“The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is the leading body for the assessment of climate change, established by the United Nations Environment Programme [sic] (UNEP) and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) to provide the world with a clear scientific view on the current state of climate change and its potential environmental and socio-economic consequences” (IPCC, 2009).
The IPCC was started in December 1988, with the passage of United Nations (UN) Resolution A/RES/43/53 “to provide internationally co-ordinated [sic] scientific assessments of the magnitude, timing and potential environmental and socio-economic impact of climate change and realistic response strategies” (UN, 1988).
Although the IPCC does not conduct research or collect climatic data, it produces reports, technical papers, and their renowned and influential Assessment Reports which are often in response to requests from the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), or from other environmental Conventions. The IPCC Second Assessment Report: Climate Change 1995 galvanized the globe around the Global Warming issue and contributed to the leaders of 84 countries signing the Kyoto Protocol.
“The Kyoto Protocol is an international agreement linked to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. The major feature of the Kyoto Protocol is that it sets binding targets for 37 industrialized countries and the European community for reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions” (UNFCC, 1997) Of note, former President Bill Clinton sent a representative to sing the treaty in December of 1997 in opposition to a June 1997, Senate bill—Senate Resolution 98—which was unanimously passed and declared that the US would not be a signatory to any protocol that limits green house gas emissions or would result in serious harm to the US economy.
The members of the international community which signed the Kyoto Protocol made a pledge to lower their green house gas emissions. See how they are doing here.
The IPCC’s work has won it wide notoriety throughout the globe. One of its most prestigious awards was the Nobel Piece Prize in 2007 which it shared with former Vice President Al Gore “for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change" (Nobel Committee, 2007).
The influence and prestige of the IPCC has not come unblemished and the IPCC has seen its share of controversy. There have been reports of politicizing the information provided to government leaders, scientists leaving the IPCC due to its “alarmist” leanings, and scientists being forced to put their names on reports they do not agree with. The Science & Environmental Policy Project (SEPP) and numerous scientists have ridiculed the IPCC for changing the text of its 1995 report after scientists had agreed on the information to presumably something more favorable to the “alarmist” view.
In the next Assessment Report (2001), the IPCC chose to include what became a controversial “Hockey Stick” graph which was the result of a paper by Michael E. Mann et al. which attempted to capture global temperatures from 1400 A.D. to 1998. This representation of global temperatures seemed to erase known historical events like the Medieval Warm Period and the “Little Ice Age”—which the IPCC had acknowledged in previous reports—and used suspect data that was not made available for a full peer review until enormous pressure was put on Mann, the UN, and the IPCC.
The following chart is a depiction of Mann's "Hockey Stick" chart.
The Hockey Stick controversy bubbled to the point that Mann et al. and the IPCC were forced to release the data for a proper review. At this point, the US Congress requested The National Academy of Sciences review the data. The NAS published a report which shed doubt on the Mann et al. study and possibly contributed to the UN’s IPCC discarding the “Hockey Stick” theory.
The following image shows the globes historic temperaure in the IPCC's 1995 report and then in the 2001 report:
Whether one chooses to highlight the world renowned success or international controversies of the IPCC, one thing is certain. The UN and the IPCC will not become complacent on this matter and will strive to complete its stated mission.
