UN climate report balances science and politics
Source: AP-Excite
By KARL RITTER
BERLIN (AP) - After racing against the clock in an all-night session, the U.N.'s expert panel on climate change was putting the final touches Saturday on a scientific guide to help governments, industries and regular people take action to stop global warming from reaching dangerous levels.
As always when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change adopts one of its high-profile reports, the weeklong talks in Berlin were slowed by wrangling between scientists and governments over which words, charts and tables to use in the roughly 30-page summary of a much bigger scientific report.
The painstaking process is meant to clarify the complex world of climate science to non-scientists but it also reflects the brinksmanship that characterizes international talks on climate action - so far unsuccessful in their goal to stop the rise of man-made carbon emissions blamed for global warming.
"Sometimes it's framed as if what the IPCC does is 'just the facts, ma'am,' and that of course is not accurate," said Steve Rayner, an Oxford scientist who has taken part in three of the IPCC's previous assessments, but not this one.
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In this Monday, April 7, 2014 file photo Ottmar Edenhofer, Co-Chairman of the IPCC Working Group III, Jochen Flasbarth, State Secretary of the German Enviroment Ministry, Rejendra K. Pachauri, Chairman of the IPCC, and Jochen Schuette, State Secretary of the German Science Ministry, from left, pose for the media prior to a meeting of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC, in Berlin, Germany. After racing against the clock in an all-night session, the U.N.'s expert panel on climate change was putting the final touches Saturday, April 12, 2014, on a scientific guide to help governments, industries and regular people take action to stop global warming from reaching dangerous levels. (AP Photo/Michael Sohn, File)