The three reports that make up the fourth assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will be published in full this year and the process begins this Friday in Paris with the publication of the first, which concentrates on the science of climate change. The importance of this and the remaining two reports should not be underestimated. For the past six years, some 2,000 of the world’s leading climatologists, glaciologists, meteorologists, oceanographers and specialists from dozens of other disciplines have trawled through all that has been published in the scientific literature on climate change and related matters. It has been a mammoth undertaking and the fruits of that work will be there for all to see in the final version of the IPCC’s first report of its fourth assessment: Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Reading through the technical summary of this draft report, it is clear that no one could go away with the impression that climate change is some conspiratorial hoax by the science establishment, as some would have us believe. Far from it. It is clear from the draft version of the report that there is now overwhelming evidence to link man-made emissions […]