IPCC to release fourth, summary report this weekend (AP)

Experts to Prepare Global Warming Report

By ARTHUR MAX – 6 days ago

If there's one document on global warming policymakers might put in their briefcase, this would be it. On Monday, scientists and government officials gather in Valencia, Spain to put together the fourth and last U.N. report on the state of global warming and what it will mean to hundreds of millions of people whose lives are being dramatically altered.

Unlike the past three tomes, this one will have little new data. Instead, it will distill the previous work into a compact guide of roughly 30 pages that summarizes complex science into language politicians and bureaucrats can understand.

It will be the first point of reference for negotiators meeting next month in Bali, Indonesia, to decide the future course of the worldwide push to curb greenhouse gas emissions after the 2012 expiration of the first phase of the Kyoto Protocol, the landmark agreement that assigned binding reduction targets to 36 countries.

The last of four reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change "integrates all the elements, the connections between them," said one of its authors, Bert Metz, of the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency.

U.N. officials delayed the Bali meeting by several months until after the report is released, expecting it would add political momentum to the conference.
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more: http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jST9_2zww_8lfQSNa0Cjcl4nl9XAD8SQC7PO1


UN Environmental Panel Readies New Report
The world’s top panel of environmental experts is set to release a new report on human-caused climate change this weekend. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is expected to summarize its three previous reports this year that have lobbied for drastic change to avoid environmental catastrophe. Panel member Kirsty Hamilton says evidence that human activity is causing global warming is now beyond dispute.

Kirsty Hamilton: "The IPCC report is very important, it's their fourth assessment report, and it's 17 years after their first one, so it's an entire generation worth of scientific knowledge it's becoming ever more confident about the observations they were making way back in 1990 . So clearly that's just a solid reinforcement for governments and everybody on the planet about the urgency of the matter.”

The release of the report comes amid censorship allegations. This week the World Wildlife Fund accused leading polluter nations of diluting the climate report to discourage taking action.
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http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/11/16/1419215

edit: confusion re date