The issue of global warming linked to human activities has been identified long before the phenomenon began to materialize. Since 1896, a Swedish scientist, Svante Archeries which will later Nobel laureate, noted that industrial civilization was based on extensive use of fossil fuels, resulting in carbon dioxide emissions. It had examined the carbon cycle and concluded that these emissions were at relatively short term, cause twice the concentration of this gas in the atmosphere and, therefore, greenhouse effect, an increase in average global temperature of 'about 4 degrees. Work Archeries constituted a development of Joseph Fourier remarks that he made in 1826 on the role of the atmosphere over the temperature of our planet. Beginning in the late 1950's, scientific and technical advances have enabled geophysicists and geochemists to model the behavior of carbon and the influence of atmospheric composition change on the global climate. Starting in 1958, they began to carefully measure the content of atmospheric carbon dioxide. In 1967 the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO), in collaboration with the International Council of Scientific Unions (now known as International Council for Science), the largest non-governmental scientific organization that brings together the science academies of almost all countries and major international scientific unions covering all scientific disciplines, have established the Global Programme of Atmospheric Research (GARP). In 1980, ICSU and WMO jointly created the World Programme for Research on Climate (WCRP), a programme which later joined the International Oceanographic Committee. In 1986, the ICSU initiated the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP). They are essentially those programmes which have been the source of numerous scientific publications that constitute the basic material which was relied scientists concerned for alerting public opinion that they were a danger only to understand, but there is a twenty years.
Their warnings are greeted in a variety of ways. For the most extremist militant environmentalists, climate change is seen as a proof of the evils of technological progress. They hold only higher values ranges of temperature calculated by scientists, put forward the most negative consequences you could imagine and generally sliding into catastrophe that some media relay with complacency. This excessive pessimism could help accelerate the awareness of a real problem. Alternatively, it may undermine its excesses by the very existence of a serious concern.
Scientists are generally very passionate who live primarily for their discipline. It is therefore legitimate to ask if they collectively do not tend to focus on the phenomena that will lead policy makers to pay attention to their work and to invest more widely and for this to dramatize the situation, focusing on the assumptions that lead to the most disturbing results. Some take advantage of this weakness argument possible to affirm that climatologists have invented from scratch global warming. However, it can be argued that their international economic challenge is such that the producing countries of fossil fuels and the major international oil companies would bridges or any scientist who devises a programme of research to show that global warming will be less important that they consider the current work.
The love of their scientific discipline has been on the contrary lead researchers interested in other areas to react instinctively against the idea of climate change induced by human activities. Their opposition was all the more natural it did not fall within their habits of thought that major natural phenomena can be influenced by events man in a short period. In a somewhat similar, some climatologists geographers challenge climate change, because they do not trust that their traditional methods which are based on the description of climates actually observed. But the issue of climate change emerged from the scientific study of the functioning of the climate machine, even if the comments are increasingly highlight the reality of this change.
2007, the year of the Fourth Assessment Report of the IPCC
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), better known throughout the world under its English name, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was established in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) and the Programme des Nations United for the Environment (UNEP). It includes all the member states of one or the other of these two organizations. Its mission is to assess the state of knowledge (including uncertainties and scientific controversies) on matters politically relevant to the elaboration of possible actions to address climate change, taking care carefully to suggest any decision whatsoever.
The IPCC currently includes three working groups that are dedicated to: (1) the phenomenon of climate change; (2) the consequences of this change and what can be done to adapt; (3) the possibilities of control the emission of greenhouse gases which govern its amplitude.
The various chapters of the IPCC reports are written by volunteer researchers, and only a few people securing for each working group, a technical support are all paid. These researchers, chosen by the officers (itself composed of scientists) among world experts on the topic, submit their draft report to a dual procedure of critical proofing. Their first version is reread opened by a group of experts from all sources. The comments received are reviewed one by one and used for the preparation of a second draft. This second version is subject to all the experts who commented on the first, and all governments who are invited to send each a single list of remarks. This second round of reviews is treated exactly like the first. The result is a third version, which is subject to approval by the general assembly.
In addition, the office of each working group organizes writing a summary for policy makers, also subjected to a double magazine. This summary that summarizes the most relevant results for all the chapters in more than a dozen pages of text and as many pages of figures and tables, was adopted verbatim by the general assembly which provides for amendments considered by the authors as compatible with the scientific truth.
This process is rigorous and cumbersome, requiring several years of work, enables the IPCC to produce reports which are considered faithful by the scientific community and objectives by all States without exception, regardless of their own interests. This miraculous alchemy is achieved by giving each of the two stakeholders weight, which varies during the various stages: the policies of the teams collectively choose competent scientific and balanced, then leave free time for scientists to write the report and resume the hand when the final adoption, while remaining sensitive to the scientific and under the chairmanship of scientists who maintain the debate in terms of the objectivity of the proposed wording.
The year 2007 is the year of the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The three previous reports dating back to 1990, 1995 and 2001. The report of the first working group was approved in early February, the second in early April and the third in early May. A summary report was submitted to the approval of a plenary session in mid-November. These reports, prepared by scientists, are intended to provide decision makers, the state of scientific and technical knowledge relevant to illuminate the decisions they take to address the risk of global climate change. These decisions relate to both measures to be prepared to face a new environment and measures to limit the extent of climate change in values "non-dangerous" to paraphrase Article 2 of the Convention on Climate Change adopted at the Conference of Heads of State, in Rio in 1992.
|
