More than a quarter of a century old and the bane of global warming sceptics everywhere, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is not about to fade into the sunset.
This past week, the UN body released its final report on climate impacts, adaptation and vulnerability – 1820 pages long – and will finalise the synthesis summary of its entire Fifth Assessment Report by month's end. That will emerge in time for the G20 gathering of leaders in Brisbane in mid-November.
The IPCC's fifth iteration has been seven years in the making, and all indications point to a Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) commencing next year to keep abreast of the latest science as well as the rise in greenhouse gas levels.
The report out this past week confirmed scientists' views that Australia was among the regions of the world already experiencing more extreme weather as the climate warms up, such as more intense heatwaves.
The report also corrected a faulty finding inserted late in the review process by a climate change sceptical economist, Britain-based Richard Tol, from one of his own papers. He argued the benefits of moderate warming may outweigh the costs.
"This error in the report would have been picked up by independent reviewers, including me, if it had appeared in the earlier drafts," Bob Ward, policy and communications director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics and Political Science, said.
"This correction will not alter the main findings of the IPCC report, which already included a warning that studies of the economic consequences of climate change omit many of the biggest impacts and so provide significant underestimates," he said.
Professor Tol, from the University of Sussex, said the wording in the report had changed but not the meaning. "The latest draft says '17 of the 20 impact estimates […] are negative', which is correct," he told Fairfax Media. "Readers would infer that there are positive impacts too."
