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Status: 07/25/2021 4:54 p.m.
On Monday, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) will begin the final meeting on the new status report. Representatives from almost 200 countries together with scientists summarize the current state of research.
The reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are like bouillon cubes: You can’t eat them straight, but a lot of soups are made from them. Every few years the IPCC summarizes the current state of science. 230 leading researchers are main authors for the current volume – and their first draft is annotated by the entire scientific world and revised in several rounds.
Working group I, which will complete its work in the next two weeks, deals with the scientific basis. What do we know, where is climate change and where is it going in this century? The most banal answers have long been clear: Climate change is here. In Germany, the German Weather Service measures 1.6 degrees above pre-industrial times.
A short version for politicians
It is man-made – all natural fluctuations cannot explain this effect – and, if it continues like this, it will lead us globally towards a three-degree increase in temperature. The IPCC does not create new knowledge, it summarizes existing knowledge and comments on the synopsis. The details fill thousands of pages. This scientific version of the report has already been completed and will no longer be touched.
But it is too complicated for practical politics. Politicians want clearly understandable bases for their decisions. That is why they founded the Climate Council in 1988 as an intergovernmental association. And that’s why the “Summary for the Policymakers” is now being made from this scientific work.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change IPCC
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was founded in 1988 by the UN environmental organization (Unep) and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). Its task is to inform politicians neutrally about scientific findings on climate change and about possible countermeasures. 195 states belong to the IPCC.
Even if the IPCC works quietly most of the time to collect the latest findings on climate change from a large number of studies and statistics, its reports repeatedly provide important impulses in the climate debate. The IPCC reports are compiled by thousands of scientists, including climate and marine researchers, statisticians, economists and health experts. The IPCC does not conduct its own research on climate change, but evaluates thousands of studies and summarizes the key findings from them. The studies used have generally passed through the so-called peer review process – that is, they have been assessed by other scientists.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is composed of three working groups: One presents the scientific findings on climate change, the second highlights the consequences of global warming and the third shows options for action. The IPCC publishes its comprehensive overviews of the current state of climate research every five to six years.
Previous reports have come true
And because the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is located on the edge between science and politics, this short version is made jointly by both groups. The scientists suggest that the government representatives ask questions and encourage. The influence of state interests is undisputed on this point – but it is now also publicly understandable via the Internet. Anyone who wants to can see exactly why what was changed afterwards.
Even if many of the messages from these reports sound familiar – or simply “old” – the data behind them are becoming more and more precise. And: So far, this has not made the forecasts any better. A fact that does not speak against the IPCC – rather against those who called it.