IPCC Second Assessment Report
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change |
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The Second Assessment Report (SAR) of the
The SPM of the WG I report contains the following statements: Greenhouse gas concentrations have continued to increase; anthropogenic aerosols tend to produce negative radiative forcings; climate has changed over the past century (air temperature has increased by between 0.3 and 0.6 °C since the late 19th century; this estimate has not significantly changed since the 1990 report); The balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate (considerable progress since the 1990 report in distinguishing between natural and anthropogenic influences on climate, because of: including aerosols; coupled models; pattern-based studies). Climate is expected to continue to change in the future (increasing realism of simulations increases confidence; important uncertainties remain but are taken into account in the range of model projections). Finally, the report stated that there were still many uncertainties (estimates of future emissions and biogeochemical cycling; models; instrument data for model testing, assessment of variability, and detection studies).
Overview
The Second Assessment Report, titled Climate Change 1995, consists of reports from each of the three Working Groups, and a Synthesis Report:[1]
- Report of Working Group I: The Science of Climate Change (IPCC SAR WG1 1995).
- Report of Working Group II: Impacts, Adaptations and Mitigation of Climate Change: Scientific-Technical Analyses (IPCC SAR WG2 1995).
- Report of Working Group III: Economic and Social Dimensions of Climate Change (IPCC SAR WG3 1995).
- The "Full Report", consisting of Synthesis of Scientific-Technical Information Relevant to Interpreting Article 2 of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, and the Summaries for Policymakers from the three Working Group reports (IPCC SAR SYR 1995).
These reports were prepared by over two thousand experts, and "contain the factual basis of the issue of climate change, gleaned from available expert literature and further carefully reviewed by experts and governments."[2]
The Synthesis Report gave its purpose as providing the scientific, technical and socio-economic information for determining
what concentrations of greenhouse gases might be regarded as "
dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system" and the charting of a future which allows for economic development which is sustainable.[3]
Conclusions
Working Group I, dealing with the scientific aspects of climate, stated that
carbon dioxide remains the most important contributor to anthropogenic forcing of climate change; projections of future global mean temperature change and sea level rise confirm the potential for human activities to alter the Earth's climate to an extent unprecedented in human history; and the long time-scales governing both the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and the response of the climate system to those accumulations, means that many important aspects of climate change are effectively irreversible.[4]
Working Group I subsequently characterized its reports in the First and Second Assessments as progressing from an understanding that the
Working Group II assessed whether the range of plausible impacts of global warming constitutes dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system,[6] while Working Group III provided information to help countries "take decisions they believe are most appropriate for their specific circumstances".[7]
Chapter 8: Detection of Climate Change and Attribution of Causes
In the IPCC process, a "convening lead author" for each chapter worked with other lead authors and contributing authors to agree the structure of the chapter, and assign teams of scientists to write each section of the chapter, producing a draft which was subject to acceptance by the whole author group. Participating governments then provided review comments on the draft, incorporated into the assessment which was presented to seek acceptance at a plenary session of the IPCC.[8][9]
The IPCC chairman Bert Bolin had difficulty finding a convening lead author for Chapter 8. After delays, Benjamin D. Santer who was doing postdoctoral research on the topic was persuaded to take on the task. Twenty participants from various countries met at the initial meeting in Livermore, California, in August 1994 to identify the scientific topic areas, and discussion continued by email. At the first drafting session (in Sigtuna, Sweden, in October) Santer persuaded the others that the chapter should discuss observational and model uncertainties, though these were also covered in other chapters. The "zeroth" draft was then sent out for peer review to scientific topic experts, all the chapter authors and lead authors of other chapters. Their responses were incorporated in the second drafting session in March 1995 at Brighton. In May the entire draft Working Group I report as well as the summary for policymakers was submitted for full "country review" by participating governments, to provide comments for incorporation at the third drafting session at Asheville, North Carolina, in July. Because of the delayed timing, Santer did not receive government comments for this meeting, some did not arrive until the plenary meeting in November.[9]
The Chapter 8 draft report put together on 5 October had an Executive Summary of the evidence, and after various qualifications, said "Taken together, these results point towards a human influence on climate." Governments at the November plenary meeting in
Prior to the publication of the Second Assessment Report, the industry group
The position of the lead author of Chapter 8, Benjamin D. Santer, was supported by fellow IPCC authors and senior figures of the American Meteorological Society (AMS) and University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR).[10] The presidents of the AMS and UCAR stated that there was a "systematic effort by some individuals to undermine and discredit the scientific process that has led many scientists working on understanding climate to conclude that there is a very real possibility that humans are modifying Earth's climate on a global scale."[10]
Other rebuttals of Seitz's comments include a 1997 paper
Debate over value of a statistical life
One of the controversies of the Second Assessment Working Group III report is the economic valuation of human life, which is used in monetized (i.e., converted into US dollar values) estimates of
In the preparation of the SAR, disagreement arose over the Working Group III
The relevant chapter [of the Report] values of statistical life based on actual studies in different countries ... What the authors of Chapter 6 did not accept, and still do not accept, was the call from a few [government] delegates for a common valuation based on the highest number for willingness to pay.
In other words, a few government delegates wanted "statistical lives" in poor countries to be valued at the same level as "statistical lives" in rich countries. IPCC author Michael Grubb[27] later commented:[24]
Many of us think that the governments were basically right. The metric [used by Pearce] makes sense for determining how a given government might make tradeoffs between its own internal projects. But the same logic fails when the issue is one of damage inflicted by some countries on others: why should the deaths inflicted by the big emitters—principally the industrialised countries—be valued differently according to the wealth of the victims' countries?
See also
- Scientific opinion on climate change
References
- ^ IPCC SAR SYR 1995, p. vii, and see IPCC website Archived 2018-11-30 at the Wayback Machine.
- ^ IPCC SAR SYR 1995, p. viii.
- UN Framework Convention on Climate Change(UNFCCC).
- ^ IPCC SAR SYR 1995, Preface, p. xi Archived 2011-10-15 at the Wayback Machine.
- ^ IPCC TAR WG1 2001, Technical Summary, Section A.2, pp. 22–3 Archived 2011-10-15 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ IPCC SAR SYR 1995, p. 27 Archived 2018-09-13 at the Wayback Machine.
- ^ IPCC SAR SYR 1995, p. 45 Archived 2018-09-13 at the Wayback Machine.
- ^ a b c "Ch. 2: Complete Transcript and Rebuttal". Complaint to Ofcom Regarding "The Great Global Warming Swindle". Sec. 2.12: Conspiracy Theory About the IPCC., in Rive et al. 2007, pp. 94–95
- ^ ISBN 978-1-59691-610-4.
- ^ a b c Rasmussen, C., ed. (25 July 1996). "Special insert—An open letter to Ben Santer". UCAR Quarterly. Archived from the original on 26 June 2006. Retrieved 24 June 2009.
- ^ IPCC Second Assessment Report: Climate Change 1995, WG1 Archived 2011-10-15 at the Wayback Machine. Summary for Policymakers, pp. 4–5
- ^ IPCC Second Assessment Report: Climate Change 1995, WG1. ch 8, summary, pp. 412, 439, xi
- ^ Seitz, F. (12 June 1996). Major deception on global warming Archived 2013-05-30 at the Wayback Machine, Wall Street Journal. p. A16.
- ISBN 0-226-50458-1.
- ^ Helvarg, David (December 16, 1996). "The greenhouse spin". The Nation. Vol. 263, no. 20. pp. 21–24. Archived from the original on February 16, 2016. Retrieved February 10, 2016.
- ^ Edwards, P. & S. Schneider (1997). "The 1995 IPCC Report: Broad Consensus or "Scientific Cleansing"?" (PDF). Ecofable/Ecoscience, 1:1 (1997), pp. 3–9. Archived (PDF) from the original on 20 January 2010. Retrieved 24 June 2009.
- ^ "Appendix G: Professor Bert Bolin's Peer Review Comments". Complaint to Ofcom Regarding "The Great Global Warming Swindle". Comment 9 (Comment 114 in the current document)., in Rive et al. 2007, pp. 165–166
- ^ This has been documented in a number of sources:
- F. Pearce (19 August 1995). "Global Row over Value of Human Life". New Scientist: 7.
- E. Masood (1995). "Developing Countries Dispute Use of Figures on Climate Change Impact". Nature. 376 (6539): 374. doi:10.1038/376374b0
- E. Masood & A. Ochert (1995). "UN Climate Change Report Turns up the Heat". Nature. 378 (6553): 119. doi:10.1038/378119a0.
- A. Meyer (1995). "Economics of Climate Change". Nature. 378 (6556): 433. doi:10.1038/378433a0.
- N. Sundaraman (1995). "Impact of Climate Change". Nature. 377 (6549): 472. S2CID 4369732.
- T. O'Riordan (1997). "Review of Climate Change 1995 – Economic and Social Dimension". Environment. 39 (9): 34–39. .
- ^ a b Pearce, D.W.; et al. Ch. 6: The social costs of climate change: greenhouse damage and the benefits of control. Box 6.1 Attributing a monetary value to a statistical life., in IPCC SAR WG3 1995, p. 196 (p.194 of PDF)
- ^ Ackerman, F. (18 May 2004). "Priceless Benefits, Costly Mistakes: What's Wrong With Cost-Benefit Analysis?". Post-autistic economics review. pp. 2–7. Archived from the original on 6 June 2013. Retrieved 2 January 2014.
- ^
For example:
- Nordhaus, W.D. (2008). "Summary for the Concerned Citizen". A Question of Balance: Weighing the Options on Global Warming Policies (PDF). New Haven, Connecticut, USA: Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-13748-4. Archived from the original(PDF) on 2008-09-10., pp.4–19
- Spash, C.L. (10 February 2007). "Climate change: Need for new economic thought" (PDF). Economic and Political Weekly. Archived from the original (PDF) on 14 June 2007., pp.485–486.
- Ch 6: Economic modelling of climate-change impacts. Sec 6.1: Introduction (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2013-05-02., in Stern 2006, pp. 144–145
- Ch 2: Economics, Ethics and Climate Change. Sec 2.3: Ethics, welfare and economic policy (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2013-05-16., in Stern 2006, pp. 28–31
- Sussman, F.G.; et al. (2008). "Ch. 4: Effects of Global Change on Human Welfare: Sec 4.3 An economic approach to human welfare". Analyses of the effects of global change on human health and welfare and human systems. A Report by the U.S. Climate Change Science Program and the Subcommittee on Global Change Research. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. pp. 124–128. Archived from the original on 2009-11-30.
- Nordhaus, W.D. (2008). "Summary for the Concerned Citizen". A Question of Balance: Weighing the Options on Global Warming Policies (PDF). New Haven, Connecticut, USA: Yale University Press.
- cost-benefit analysis(which extensively uses monetized estimates) can be applied to climate change. Other chapters (1–4, 6, and 10) also contain relevant information.
- ^ For example:
- Ahmad, Q.K.; et al. Ch 2. Methods and tools. Sec 2.5. Methods for Costing and Valuation., in IPCC TAR WG2 2001, pp. 120–126.
- Fisher, B.S.; et al. Ch 3: Issues related to mitigation in the long-term context. Sec 3.5.3.3 Cost-benefit analysis, damage cost estimates and social costs of carbon., in IPCC AR4 WG3 2007
- ^ a b c Grubb, M. (September 2005). "Stick to the Target" (PDF). Prospect Magazine. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2013-07-03.
- ^
Committee on the Science of Climate Change, US National Research Council (2001). "Ch. 7: Assessing Progress in Climate Science". Climate Change Science: An Analysis of Some Key Questions. Washington, D.C., USA: National Academy Press. p. 23. ISBN 0-309-07574-2. Archivedfrom the original on 5 June 2011.
- ^ Pearce, D. (1 January 1996). "Correction on Global Warming Cost Benefit Conflict". Environmental Damage Valuation and Cost Benefit News. Archived from the original on 16 July 2008. Retrieved 20 May 2009.
- ^ Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge. "Michael Grubb: Other positions and activities". University of Cambridge Faculty of Economics website. Archived from the original on 3 July 2013. Retrieved 12 December 2012.
Sources
The Second Assessment Report consists of the following reports from each of the three Working Groups, and a Synthesis Report. The WG2 report has on-line text; all are available in PDF format at the IPCC's documents web page.
- ISBN 0-521-56433-6.
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- ISBN 0-521-56431-X.
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: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link) (pb: 0-521-56437-9) pdf - ISBN 0-521-56051-9.
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: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link) (pb: 0-521-56854-4) pdf Archived 2017-10-11 at the Wayback Machine
- IPCC SAR SYR (1995), Climate Change 1995: A report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Second Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC pdf.
- Stern, N. (2006). Stern Review Report on the Economics of Climate Change (pre-publication edition) (Report). London: HM Treasury. Archived from the original on 7 April 2010. Retrieved 8 March 2017.
- IPCC TAR WG1 (2001). Houghton, J.T.; Ding, Y.; Griggs, D.J.; Noguer, M.; van der Linden, P.J.; Dai, X.; Maskell, K.; Johnson, C.A. (eds.). Climate Change 2001: The Scientific Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the ISBN 978-0521807678. Archived from the original on 15 December 2019. Retrieved 18 December 2019.)
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: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link) (pb: 0521014956 - IPCC TAR WG2 (2001). McCarthy, J. J.; Canziani, O. F.; Leary, N. A.; Dokken, D. J.; White, K. S. (eds.). Climate Change 2001: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability. Contribution of Working Group II to the ISBN 978-0521807685. Archived from the original on 14 May 2016. Retrieved 18 December 2019.)
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: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link) (pb: 0521015006 - Rive, N.; Jackson, B.; Rado, D.; Marsh, R. (11 June 2007). "Complaint to Ofcom Regarding "The Great Global Warming Swindle" (final revision)". OfcomSwindleComplaint.. Also available as a PDF
- ISBN 978-0521880114.).
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: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link) (pb: 978-0521705981