6
The WLB report also claims that, quoting a 2014 article in the Guardian, increasing evidence ‘that policy summaries on climate impacts and mitigation by the IPCC
were significantly “diluted under political pressure from some of the world’s biggest greenhouse gas emitters, including Saudi Arabia, China, Brazil, and the United
States.” (WLB, p. 34).
This WLB report also attributes IPCC’s underestimation of climate impacts to
IPCC’s synthesizing peer-reviewed science that is based on scientific norms that
condemn speculation (WLB 2018, p. 5). For example, although scientists knew that
permafrost which contains methane could leak melt from the top down and the bottom up, because scientists could not observe how the permafrost would melt from
the bottom up they could not develop empirically verifiable risk assessments of
permafrost melting from the bottom up. As a result, the report concludes that some
of the climate research on which IPCC has relied has tended to underplay climate
risks and as a result, IPCC has exhibited preferences for conservative estimates of
climate change impacts (WLB 2018, p. 5). This practice the WLB reports labels as
“scholarly reticence.” (WLB 2018, p. 5).
This WLB report further claims that climate science has succumbed to the norm
followed by most physical sciences to refrain from any speculation that cannot be
grounded in empirically determined probability calculations. This epistemic norm,
the report claims, is not well-suited to guide predictions about very scientifically
complex matters such as earth system dynamics. The report calls this approach the
Probability Obsession of science which is not well suited to predict future states of
complex systems about matters for which there are no historical antecedents (WLB
2018, p. 2).
The WLB report also notes that a conservative approach to climate science began
to dominate and as a result, the planetary future has become a hostage to national
economic self-interest. Thus, the paper claims it became “alarmist” to claim the
climate change is an existential threat to life on earth (WLB 2018, p. 4).
The report further notes that although “a fast emergency-scale transition to a
post-fossil fuel world is absolutely necessary to address climate change…. yet this
is excluded from consideration by policymakers because it is considered to be too
disruptive.” And so the paper claims “we have a policy failure of epic proportions.”
(WLB 2018, p. 4).
The WLB report further notes that although it has widely been reported that if the
ghg emissions reductions commitments or Nationally Determined Commitments
(NDCs) made by governments so far under the Paris Agreement are complied with,
the Earth’s temperature is expected to rise to 3.4 °C by 2100 without taking into
account “long-term” carbon cycle feedbacks (WLB 2018, p. 15). Yet if the positive
feedbacks are fully considered, the temperature path defined by the NDCs could
result in around 5 °C of warming by 2100 according to a MIT study (WLB 2018,
p. 13). Yet, the report claims that even if warming reaches 3 °C, most of Bangladesh
and Florida would drown, while major coastal cities—Shanghai, Legos, Mumbai—
would be swamped likely creating larger flows of climate refugees. Most regions of
the world would see a significant drop in food production and an increasing number
of extreme weather events, whether heat waves, floods or storms (WLB 2018, p. 13).
D. A. Brown
The WLB report also claims that, quoting a 2014 article in the Guardian, increasing evidence ‘that policy summaries on climate impacts and mitigation by the IPCC
were significantly “diluted under political pressure from some of the world’s biggest greenhouse gas emitters, including Saudi Arabia, China, Brazil, and the United
States.” (WLB, p. 34).
This WLB report also attributes IPCC’s underestimation of climate impacts to
IPCC’s synthesizing peer-reviewed science that is based on scientific norms that
condemn speculation (WLB 2018, p. 5). For example, although scientists knew that
permafrost which contains methane could leak melt from the top down and the bottom up, because scientists could not observe how the permafrost would melt from
the bottom up they could not develop empirically verifiable risk assessments of
permafrost melting from the bottom up. As a result, the report concludes that some
of the climate research on which IPCC has relied has tended to underplay climate
risks and as a result, IPCC has exhibited preferences for conservative estimates of
climate change impacts (WLB 2018, p. 5). This practice the WLB reports labels as
“scholarly reticence.” (WLB 2018, p. 5).
This WLB report further claims that climate science has succumbed to the norm
followed by most physical sciences to refrain from any speculation that cannot be
grounded in empirically determined probability calculations. This epistemic norm,
the report claims, is not well-suited to guide predictions about very scientifically
complex matters such as earth system dynamics. The report calls this approach the
Probability Obsession of science which is not well suited to predict future states of
complex systems about matters for which there are no historical antecedents (WLB
2018, p. 2).
The WLB report also notes that a conservative approach to climate science began
to dominate and as a result, the planetary future has become a hostage to national
economic self-interest. Thus, the paper claims it became “alarmist” to claim the
climate change is an existential threat to life on earth (WLB 2018, p. 4).
The report further notes that although “a fast emergency-scale transition to a
post-fossil fuel world is absolutely necessary to address climate change…. yet this
is excluded from consideration by policymakers because it is considered to be too
disruptive.” And so the paper claims “we have a policy failure of epic proportions.”
(WLB 2018, p. 4).
The WLB report further notes that although it has widely been reported that if the
ghg emissions reductions commitments or Nationally Determined Commitments
(NDCs) made by governments so far under the Paris Agreement are complied with,
the Earth’s temperature is expected to rise to 3.4 °C by 2100 without taking into
account “long-term” carbon cycle feedbacks (WLB 2018, p. 15). Yet if the positive
feedbacks are fully considered, the temperature path defined by the NDCs could
result in around 5 °C of warming by 2100 according to a MIT study (WLB 2018,
p. 13). Yet, the report claims that even if warming reaches 3 °C, most of Bangladesh
and Florida would drown, while major coastal cities—Shanghai, Legos, Mumbai—
would be swamped likely creating larger flows of climate refugees. Most regions of
the world would see a significant drop in food production and an increasing number
of extreme weather events, whether heat waves, floods or storms (WLB 2018, p. 13).
D. A. Brown