IPCC

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Once More into the Breach

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Once More into the Breach

For the next month the world will once again be focused on the treacherous global geopolitical terrain of climate change.

The 26th Conference of the Parties (COP26) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) will be held in Glasgow, Scotland, beginning on October 31. The talks are scheduled to end on Friday, November 12, but if recent experience is any guide will be extended over the weekend as agreements are forged and contentious issues are resolved—or not, in which case they will be tabled for later consideration. Kicking the can down the road is standard operating procedure for these meetings, as one might expect for a 196-member international body that must operate by consensus.

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Red Alert on Climate Change in United Nations Climate Report

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Red Alert on Climate Change in United Nations Climate Report

The very first finding in the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (UNIPCC, or simply, IPCC) August 9 report is this:

“It is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land. Widespread and rapid changes in the atmosphere, ocean, cryosphere and biosphere have occurred.”

I strongly suspect that this is the first time the word “unequivocal” has appeared in an IPCC report, given the IPPC’s “calibrated language” and the fact that these reports require both scientific and political consensus. Artist Alisa Singer illustrated one thread of the evidence for human-caused climate change.