Why two crucial pages were left out of the latest U.N. climate report Delegates attend the opening of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) at the Tivoli Congress Center in Copenhagen on October 27, 2014. (AFP PHOTO/Getty Images)

On Sunday, the United Nations' IPCC, the world's leading authority on the science of global warming, released its latest "Synthesis Report." And it painted a pretty dire picture. Significant global warming, the report said, is already "irreversible" -- and if policymakers don't act, a dangerous 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) warming threshold will be breached. That's a strong message -- but it might have been even stronger. You see, one of the report's more powerful sections wound up being left out during last minute negotiations over the text in Copenhagen. And it was a section that, among other matters, tried to specify other measures that would indicate whether we are entering a danger zone of profound climate impact, and just how dramatic emissions cuts will have to be in order to avoid crossing that threshold. This outcome -- and the divergent national views underlying it -- is a prelude to the political tensions we can expect at next month's mega climate change meeting in Lima, Peru, and then especially in Paris at the end of 2015, when governments will gather to try to negotiate a global agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The dropped section in question appeared in an August 25, 2014 draft of the synthesis report, but not in the final version. It was a box entitled "Information Relevant to Article 2 of the UNFCCC“. The box would have comprised two pages in the final report, and was worked on by a team of scientists for nearly three years. It also discussed what it would take to stabilize climate change in “sufficient” time to stave off these worst impacts. On this subject, the box stated that "rapid and deep emission reductions" would be required to keep global warming below 2 degrees Celsius. Indeed, it stated, the world can only emit about 1000 more gigatonnes of carbon dioxide (one gigatonne is equivalent to a billion tonnes) in the remainder of this century, adding that "at current rates, this remaining budget will be exhausted in the next 20 to 30 years." Asked about the reasons for the box's omission, IPCC spokesman Jonathan Lynn said that "the entire report" remains relevant to Article II of the UNFCCC. The box, he says, "was an attempt to compile the most relevant information from the report into one place. At the meeting, many delegates felt that the proposed language or alternative proposals for the wording of the box were unbalanced. In discussions among delegates and scientists it eventually proved impossible to find language that everyone could accept. The meeting concluded that a separate box was unnecessary given the wealth of relevant information throughout the report.“

Michael Oppenheimer, a climate scientist at Princeton who was also part of the core writing team, suggests that politics got in the way of the inclusion of this scientific information. The science relating to what Article II of the UNFCC requires countries to do, he admits, falls "into that sensitive area. But in my view," Oppenheimer continues, "the governments should back off from their worries about the framework convention when they’re negotiating over IPCC text. Otherwise they're not going to be getting good analysis.“ Then why put Article 2 in an IPCC document? So for all of these reasons, making scientific statements that were of such close relevance to the UNFCCC may have been a bridge too far -- especially in the time allotted. And the IPCC is, in the end, a hybrid process that is both scientific but also political.

old wounds are re-opened

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Very important: the SPM text box only mentioned dangerous interference. ARTICLE 2: OBJECTIVE The ultimate objective of this Convention and any related legal instruments that the Conference of the Parties may adopt is to achieve, in accordance with the relevant provisions of the Convention, stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system. Such a level should be achieved within a time-frame sufficient to allow ecosystems to adapt naturally to climate change, to ensure that food production is not threatened and to enable economic development to proceed in a sustainable manner.

a non-constructive exchange but great compromise: remember, original schedule was to close on Friday night! a non-constructive exchange but great compromise: everyone a bit unhappy

a constructive exchange

all true and reasonable, but seen as meddling must be better way to spend time – at least not contentious

IPCC AR5 SYR

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added √ sea ice expanded to full paragraph

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more schematic, less quantified DRAFT

expanded DRAFT

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not the SYR SPM, but the ‘longer’ underlying Synthesis Report added while 3-page box removed no ref. to Article2

DRAFT not the SYR SPM, but the ‘longer’ underlying Synthesis Report

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