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Journalism of Courage
The upcoming IPCC report is likely to confirm that there are only uncertainties on climate change.
The leaked draft of a report by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change IPCC admits what the sceptics want to hear: that the predicted rate of global warming was overstated,that there has actually been a pause in warming and that scientists have not given due weightage to the planets natural weather cycles of ice ages punctuated by warmer spells the last was the Medieval Warm Period. Paradoxically,the report also claims to be 95 per cent sure that increases in global temperature owe to human activity. In short,the report reconfirms old truths,the only truths out there: the issue of global warming remains as contentious as ever,the outcomes of modelling climate remain as uncertain as ever,and it remains 95 per cent futile to expect absolute certainties from a probabilistic model.
The IPCC report,the first since 2007,is being treated as infallible even before it is out. On the contrary,it is a scientific review of the literature of the last six years and at least one of its authors has protested against it being treated like a religious tract offering certainties. Meanwhile,the 195 countries which back the IPCC have filed 1,800 questions concerning the report. Since the quest for truth is illusory,governments should decide on green taxes and subsidies according to their political inclinations,using climate science reports only as rough guides,not as justifications of scriptural force.
