Q&A: the 2021 IPCC Report.

The Orroral Valley Fire (Australian Capital Territory)
on January 29th, 2020 (20:51:04). [A]

By now most everybody has heard or read the news about the 6th IPCC Assessment Report released this week.

From my perspective, a relatively good news is that, although permafrost is indeed thawing, so far this thawing has not reached catastrophic proportions and is expected to remain that way for a while.

As regular readers might be aware, I am particularly concerned with permafrost (and the methane hydrates of the Arctic Ocean, both of which are considered potential tipping points). I have been researching that subject and in the near future I’ll write more on this.

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Pep Canadell (CSIRO), Joelle Gergis (Australian National University), Malte Meinshausen (The University of Melbourne), and Mark Hemer and Michael Grose (CSIRO), all of them contributors to the report, wrote an excellent and brief overview and summary of findings and recommendations.

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Even after reading good summaries, questions may still linger. The ABC’s Michael Slezak (national environment, science and technology reporter) and Penny Timm penned a brief collection of answers to the following questions:

1. “What does the IPCC report say about how fast we are warming?”
2. “Why would reaching 1.5ºC by 2030 be a big deal?”
3. “What is the IPCC, and why is it important?”
4. “What’s the latest IPCC report everyone is talking about?”
5. “What are the other key takeaways from the report?”
6. “What does global warming mean for Australia?”
7. “What can be done about climate change?”

A separate, partly overlapping, but more complete and detailed series of answers comes from Carbon Brief:

1. “What is this report?”
2. “How is Earth’s temperature changing?”
3. “How much warmer will the world get in future?”
4. “When might global warming reach 1.5°C?”
5. “How are rainfall patterns changing?”
6. “What impact is warming having on the world’s snow and ice?”
7. “What does the report say about changes to the oceans?”
8. “How have projections of sea level rise changed since AR5?”
9. “What does the report say about the impact humans are having?”
10. “What does the report say about abrupt changes and ‘tipping points’?”
11. “How does air pollution affect global temperatures?”
12. “How have climate sensitivity estimates changed since AR5?”
13. “What does the report say about the remaining carbon budget?”
14. “What does the report say about ‘net-zero’?”
15. “How are weather extremes changing and what role does climate change play?”
16. “How do climate risks vary across the world?”

Those who, like me, are concerned with permafrost and methane hydrates may find the answer to question 10 relevant.

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Of course, pre-emptive FAQs like those cannot cover all questions readers may have. Nick Kilvert, ABC environment reporter, came up with a very good question, unfrequently asked: “Where and How Will we get the Metals to Feed our Future Technology Needs?” (August 12th).

It’s to Kilvert’s credit he asked that question, which often remains unasked let alone answered. For a journalistic piece, he did a good job finding answers. But that is a difficult question that cannot be fully approached in such medium.

 

The few times I’ve seen that question asked, the answers given to it have been extremely troublesome. A couple years ago Asad Rehman and Jasper Bernes tackled that.

Rehman (The Independent, May 4th, 2019) focuses on colonialism, a perspective of which I am in general wary of. But both him and Bernes (Commune, April 25th, 2019) make good points.

Image Credits:
[A] “The Orroral Valley Fire viewed from Tuggeranong on the evening of 28 January” at 20:51:04. Author: Nick-D. Source: WikiMedia. File licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license. It should have gone without saying, but here goes anyway: there is no suggestion the licensor endorses me or my use of such file.