We should all be dead by now, thanks to overpopulation and resource
depletion. The few of us remaining should be scavenging a landscape denuded of
life by acid rains and UV rays. Thankfully, we are not. Also still standing are
the scientific institutions and the global bureaucracies that predicted our
premature demise. One of those is the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
(IPCC).
The job of the IPCC is to provide a review of climate-change research to policymakers. The bulk of
climate policymaking occurs under the United Nations Framework Convention on
Climate Change (UNFCCC), which meets yearly to try to wrangle a global
agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. At the 2015 UNFCCC meeting in
Paris, a loose deal was struck. It aimed to limit global warming to 2°C, with a
looser agreement to aim to limit it to 1.5°C. Subsequently, the UNFCCC asked
the IPCC to compare global warming of 1.5°C and 2°C for a report to be
published this year. So far, so boring.
