Tony Blair's recent "but wait" advice - that we should, with childlike faith, trust future technological advances to magic away the consequences of our environmental plundering - may look even less appropriate in the face of an upcoming report. On February 2nd the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) will release the most authoritative and thoroughly peer-reviewed report on climate change ever. The previews already filtering through tell us the report will not be conducive to apathy.

The IPCC was established in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP):

"The role of the IPCC is to assess on a comprehensive, objective, open and transparent basis the scientific, technical and socio-economic information relevant to understanding the scientific basis of risk of human-induced climate change, its potential impacts and options for adaptation and mitigation. The IPCC does not carry out research nor does it monitor climate related data or other relevant parameters. It bases its assessment mainly on peer reviewed and published scientific/technical literature."

The February 2nd release is the first volume (weighing in at around 1,600 pages) of four, which together will make up the IPCC's fourth report (previous reports were released in 1990, 1995 and 2001). This latest report is regarded as a more influential entity than the Stern Report that rocked the boat late last year, and will therefore be hard to ignore.

The TimesOnline sheds a smidgen of light on the report:

Last warning: 10 years to save world...

Scientists say rising greenhouses gases will make climate change unstoppable in a decade.

THE world has just 10 years to reverse surging greenhouse gas emissions or risk runaway climate change that could make many parts of the planet uninhabitable. The stark warning comes from scientists who are working on the final draft of a new report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The report, due to be published this week, will draw together the work of thousands of scientists from around the world who have been studying changes in the world’s climate and predicting how they might accelerate.

They conclude that unless mankind rapidly stabilises greenhouse gas emissions and starts reducing them, it will have little chance of keeping global warming within manageable limits.

The results could include the destruction of the Amazon rainforest and the Great Barrier Reef, the forced migration of hundreds of millions of people from equatorial regions, and the loss of vast tracts of land under rising seas as the ice caps melt.

In Europe the summers could become unbearably hot, especially in southern countries such as Greece, Spain and Italy, while Britain and northern Europe would face summer droughts and wet, stormy winters.

“The next 10 years are crucial,” said Richard Betts, leader of a research team at the Met Office’s Hadley Centre for climate prediction. “In that decade we have to achieve serious reductions in carbon emissions. After that time the task becomes very much harder.”

Among the scientists’ biggest fears is that rising temperatures and levels of greenhouse gases could soon overwhelm the natural systems that normally keep their levels in check. - TimesOnline

What they're referring to is the 'tipping point' phenomenon, where elements of nature reach a point of no return, thereafter unraveling at an accelerated pace. Picture how a tightly wound golf-ball reacts once it's lost its outer skin.

The shrinking Amazon

The amazon forest is an easy-to-describe example of this: At the moment the Amazon produces a large proportion of its own rainfall - getting back as rain the moisture it loses through evaporation. Scientists fear that if the forest shrinks, as expected, by another 20% over the next two decades, that this moisture-recycling capacity will be severely inhibited - causing a runaway drying effect on the forest that remains. This means the forest that is currently one of the world's most significant CO2 sinks, will become an enormous CO2 generator.

Another example is the world's melting permafrost, which is, and will, release increasing amounts of the methane and CO2 it stores - in turn significantly escalating the pace of global warming.

About half the 24 billion tons of carbon dioxide generated by human activities each year are absorbed by forests and oceans — a process without which the world might already be several degrees warmer.

But as CO2 levels rise and soils dry, microbes can start breaking down accumulated organic matter, so forests become net producers of greenhouse gases. The sea’s power to absorb CO2 also falls sharply as it warms.

The latest research suggests the threshold for such disastrous changes will come when CO2 levels reach 550 parts per million (ppm), roughly double their natural levels. This is predicted to happen around 2040-50.

“At the moment the real impact of our emissions is buffered because CO2 is absorbed by natural systems. However, if we reach this threshold they could be magnified instead,” said Betts. “It means we must start the action needed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the next few years.” - TimesOnline

Can we do it? Can we make the necessary reductions?

His warnings were backed up by Dr Malte Meinshausen, a researcher at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany. He has used computer modelling to work out what might happen if greenhouse gas emissions were cut immediately, in 10 years’ time or later.

His results showed that immediate action might allow mankind to hold CO2 levels at 450ppm — well below the 550ppm danger level. However, Meinshausen and his colleagues recognise that this is unrealistic because the world’s governments are in such disarray over global warming. The best hope, they say, is that a global plan will emerge in the next few years, most likely from the renegotiations of the Kyoto treaty on reducing emissions.

“We have to make sure carbon emissions peak no later than 2015 and then fall at around 3% a year. If we let them keep rising after that date it becomes much harder to bring them under control,” said Meinshausen. - TimesOnline

As the Stern Report emphasised last year - determined efforts now can avoid a far more expensive, and perhaps impossible, task later. The scientists involved in the IPCC report, are also emphasising that due to the intensely peer-reviewed process the latest findings, and those of previous IPCC reports, have tended to the conservative....

Stand by for a storm of media activity next week when the report is officially released.

Want to comment? Visit the Celsias Lounge and find or start a topic!