IPCC 2007
The first meeting in 6 years of the IPCC - the UN-sponsored Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change - will take place in Paris this coming week. Apparently, scientists reporting to the meeting have updated their probality that global warming is caused by human activities from 66% at the last IPCC meeting to 90% now. From the Sydney Morning Herald report:
“The scientists predict that the average global temperature will rise by 0.2 degrees in each of the next two decades, double the rate of warming that would have occurred if greenhouse outputs had been stabilised at 2000 levels.
The advice to the governments says man-made carbon dioxide emissions already under way in the 21st century - even if they were to cease at the end of the century - will continue to exert a warming effect for more than a thousand years because it takes time for the gas to leave the Earth.”
Meanwhile, the US delegation will supposedly seek to include greater emphasis on technologies for climate change mitigation, such as using giant mirrors or airborne particles to block the sun’s rays from reaching earth. One need hardly add that such technologies would be unlikely to be needed if the current US administration had been more serious about the problem, earlier.