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World leaders need to remain alert to latest scientific thought on climate change
IOP
26 September 2007
Melting icecaps and ‘climate chaos’ have put climate change at the top of the agenda for the UN General Assembly’s meeting this week. The meeting is a precursor to the November meeting in Bali where leaders will try to agree on a successor to the Kyoto Protocol.
A new Institute of Physics’ (IOP) report, Climate change prediction: A robust or flawed process?, published today, reveals that while there is general consensus on the underlying causes of the changes in our atmosphere, there is not unanimity among scientists.
The report was produced after a seminar held earlier this year to discuss the validity of current scientific strategies, particularly computer modelling, which are being used to establish and evaluate the link between global warming and human activity.
World leaders have been influenced by one very important document, the IPCC Summary for Policymakers of the Scientific Assessment, which drew many of its conclusions from computer modelling. IOP’s latest publication shows that despite general political consensus, the debate on the causes of climate change is still ongoing.
At the seminar, Professor Richard Lindzen, Professor of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, explained the limitations of climate models and outlined why attempts to attribute global temperature rise to an increase in CO2 emissions were flawed. Professor Alan Thorpe, Chief Executive of the National Environment Research Council, based his presentation on the evidence in the scientific literature, showing that current and future warming of the climate is caused by the human input of greenhouse gases.
Click here to read the press release
For further information, contact IOP Press Officer, Joseph Winters, at joseph.winters@iop.org or call 020 7470 4815
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