The IPCC Fifth Assessment Report is due to come out next year. But it looks like a sneak peak is already out in the open. A “leaked report” has been obtained by “some media,” the Globe and Mail reports. The report states “human activity as the largest factor behind rising global temperatures. That confidence level, quantified at 95 per cent, is the highest of any assessment to date….The report also puts a better than 90 per cent chance that continued emissions at or above current rates will produce changes in the global climate system not seen on Earth for hundreds of thousands of years.”
Where the leaked doc is vague is where such science is usually vague, and that is on the time-frames associated with the real, and most likely detrimental changes to the earth’s climate. “…the natural variability of the Earth’s climate over periods of a few decades still makes it difficult to know exactly how global warming will play out in the short term,” Dr. Shepherd told the Globe and Mail.
Will the 5th assessment have the clout to change the minds of those against the anthropogenic impact of the climate crisis? U of T’s Douglas Macdonald says that “What’s driving the debate now is that this is an incredibly complex, difficult issue which is going to impose costs on all kinds of people who have got the ability to resist.”