IN SCIENCE, more information is supposed to lead to better conclusions and greater consensus. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which published its latest report on March 31st, certainly has more information. The new study synthesises 73,000 published works (a quarter of them in Chinese). This represents a 100-fold increase in about 30 years. But consensus remains elusive. Richard Tol of Sussex University, in Britain, disparagingly appraised the report’s conclusions as “the four horsemen of the apocalypse”. The final version appears to have been fought over paragraph and comma between those (such as Dr Tol) who want to describe dispassionately what they think is happening and those who want to scare the world into taking action.Every six or so years, the IPCC produces a three-part encyclopedia of the climate. This report is the second tranche of its latest effort. The first, on the science of climate change, came out last September. It argued that the process is accelerating even though the world’s surface temperatures are currently flatlining (a phenomenon most climate scientists regard as merely a pause in an upward trend). This, second,...
from The Economist: Science and technology http://ift.tt/1k3tDx4
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