Leaked IPCC Draft: Climate Change Signals Expected To Be Relatively Small Over Coming 20-30 Years

It seems that according the early draft, CO2 induced climate change is going to take a backseat to natural variability.

The IPCC draft, which has found its way into my possession, contains a lot more unknowns than knowns. When you get down to specifics, the academic consensus is far less certain. The draft gives even less succour to those seeking here a new mandate for urgent action on greenhouse gas emissions, declaring: “Uncertainty in the sign of projected changes in climate extremes over the coming two to three decades is relatively large because climate change signals are expected to be relatively small compared to natural climate variability”.

But before declaring victory, it is worth noting Richard Black’s expectation that governments will be pressing for different conclusions because money is at stake. The good news about the leaked document is that efforts to alter the text will be noticed. Based on Black’s report, it seems that the IPCC has at long last done the right thing on extreme events and climate change.  It will be most interesting to see the reactions. –-Roger Pielke Jr, 14 November 2011

Southern Europe will be gripped by fierce heatwaves, drought in North Africa will be more common, and small island states face ruinous storm surges from rising seas, a report by United Nations climate scientists says. The assessment is the most comprehensive yet by the 194-nation Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change into the impact of climate change on extreme weather events. A 20-page draft ‘summary for policymakers’ says that global warming will create weather on steroids, and that these amped-up events – cyclones, heatwaves, diluvian rains, drought – will hit the world unevenly. –Marlowe Hood, Agence France-Presse, 14 November 2011

Russia’s chief climate negotiator said the country will “never” sign up to extend the Kyoto Protocol for a second implementation period, casting further doubt on chances of a deal at the international climate conference in South Africa at the end of this month. “We will never sign Kyoto 2 because it would not cover every country,” Oleg Shamanov, director of international cooperation on the environment at the Foreign Ministry, said late last week. Roland Oliphant, The Moscow Times, 13 November 2011

A new and broader climate deal is out of reach for now and instead nations need to focus on how to replace the ailing Kyoto Protocol before 2020, Britain’s minister of state for energy and climate change said on Monday. The view is recognition that agreement on a pact that commits all major greenhouse gas polluters to curbing the growth in planet-warming emissions is slipping further away, in part because of sluggish economic growth and a mounting debt crisis. Henry Foy and Matthias Williams, Reuters, 14 November 2011

Academic freedom is an old privilege. Academics can report the results of their research without fearing that the political fall-out would affect their economic security or their career. –Richard Tol, Climate Etc, 12 November 2011

Finally, a vestigial government-funded program actually worth cutting gets taken out as Denmark’s new regime change is opting to excise Bjorn Lomborg’s $1.6 million in funding for his Copenhagen Consensus Center. “It’s been very strange that particular researchers have received special treatment due to ideology. We’re going to run fiscal policy differently,” said Ida Auken from the Socialist People’s Party. –-Laurel Whitney,  Desmog, 28 September 2011

Hint to green wastrels in the Energy Department and elsewhere: when even the New York Times thinks the green madness has gone too far, it has. Putting green lipstick on a pig doesn’t turn that pig into Ralph Nader. There may be a dumber mass movement in the country than the fuzzy minded sentimentalists of the great green herd, but it isn’t easy to figure out which mass movement that would be. –Walter Russell Mead, Via Meadia, 13 November 2011