IPCC’s New Emphasis on Risk May
Signal Broad Shift in Climate Thinking

From the Spring 2009 Issue

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<p>I thought you would be interested in this article from <em>environment: YALE</em> magazine, the Journal of the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies.<br />
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<h3 style="color:#666;">IPCC’s New Emphasis on Risk May Signal Broad Shift in Climate Thinking</h3>
<em><p>By Jon Luoma
</p></em><p><span class="dropcap">A</span> tipping point in the debate over global warming came in 2007, and the world’s news media were abuzz about it. That November, government delegates from almost all of the world’s nations, meeting in Valencia, Spain, came to a consensus on the wording of a 25-page climate change report titled “Summary for Policymakers.” That summary for the world’s leaders would accompany the fourth and latest round of analysis from scientists and other experts from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).</p> <p>Participants in a famously cautious process were finally ready to say not only that climate change was a reality, but that human activity is almost certainly at its root. (That same year, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change shared the Nobel Peace Prize with former Vice President Al Gore.)</p> <p>Echoing language from the scientific assessment, the summary for the world’s political leaders for the first time bluntly exclaimed that “warming of the climate system is unequivocal. … Most of the observed increase in global average temperatures … is <em>very likely</em> due to the observed increase in anthropogenic GHG [greenhouse gas] concentrations.”</p> <p>Considering that representatives of even long-reluctant nations concurred, including the United States under the Bush administration, the forcefulness of the conclusion was news indeed. But another profound paradigm shift that went unnoticed also may have begun as early as the November 2007 Valencia meeting, according to Gary Yohe, a visiting professor of economics at F&ES this year and Woodhouse/Sysco Professor of Economics at Wesleyan University.</p> <p>Neither the…

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IPCC’s New Emphasis on Risk May Signal Broad Shift in Climate Thinking

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IPCC’s New Emphasis on Risk May
Signal Broad Shift in Climate Thinking