Arctic Climate Impact Assessment report

Last night on C-SPAN, I watched the presentation accompanying the official release of the overview of the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment report [download]. I emphasize "official" because this overview was apparently leaked to the press last week as the findings show the Bush administration's policies in a very bad light.

The content of the report was coherently and cogently presented by the scientists addressing both an evaluation of the present state of the Arctic as well as projections based on several different global warming scenarios (using different models). Independent of the broader implications, the presentation went to some length to explain the role of sea-ice, it's impact on the climate and ecology, and various mechanisms by which these changes could have global effects. (I highly recommend the well-written, graphic intensive, lay-person accessible overview which I have provided a link to above).

The findings and projections are particularly of concern due to the extremely short time scales [~10-20 years] over which they can be expected to occur, and the magnitude of these changes to the ecology and climate of the Arctic, even with optimistic models of global temperature change. Some of the more extended projections included the possibility of Greenland melting away almost entirely by the end of the century, and also the possibility of the polar bear becoming extinct due to the disappearance of sea-ice.

During the Q&A session after the presentations, there was one particularly interesting question (and answer!). The question was whether the report was largely filled with "negative" findings and if it had any "positive" findings in it. The response from Robert Corell (the chairman of the panel) was very good: He said that this was a question of perspective.

• From the standpoint of the indigenous people who lived in the Arctic, these climate changes were almost completely "negative" because it was causing severe changes to their basic subsistence life-styles (for example, impacts on the Arctic vegetation due to increased freeze-and-thaw cycles which directly effected the caribou and reindeer populations) and also to the safety of their homes due to extensive coastal erosion and flooding (184 villages out of 213 in Alaska itself, leave alone the rest of the Arctic, have been effected and may need relocation soon as also confirmed by an independent GAO report released last year).
  
  
• From the perspective of new economic prospects -- the "positive" aspects were the melting ice was making Arctic resources more accessible (apparently British Petroleum had just finalized a deal to open a several billion dollar oil-drilling outfit in Scandinavia), enabling new land to be made available for agriculture, and also that due to the melting sea-ice there was increasing chance of a new northern shipping channels opening up.

So whether all this was "negative" or "positive" was truly indeed in the eyes of the beholder.

A particularly noticeable aspect of the presentation was that at every step the presenters were repeatedly trying to emphasize:

1. that this was a work of science and not policy. [The policy report based on the scientific report is due to be released on November 24th]
   
2. that it was a legitimate, non-controversial scientific work involving a large international group of scientists and that the 1200-page report was extensively reviewed and vetted by non-governmental and governmental scientists and agencies as well as the different indigenous Arctic communities.
   
3. that the funding for this study was provided by the governments of the Arctic countries, so this was not (atleast by definition) an "activitist, anti-establishment" scientific work

This strong defensive posture was highly amusing. I imagine for a govt-funded study to reveal findings that are highly critical to the govt must be a great source of pressure. But that apart I'm also glad for this defensive approach to doing the science -- when it could provide the basis for policy decisions which could have significant long term effects, I imagine that it is not a time to be lax or overconfident.

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Noting the presence of a Washington Post reporter at the presentation who asked a couple of questions, I looked up today's edition to see how this had been reported. The article (by Juliet Eilperin) is loosely faithful though choosing to take the more sensationalist route with the title "Study Says Polar Bears Could Face Extinction: Warming Shrinks Sea Ice Mammals Depend On". Furthermore, it seems to have found an expert to provide the token soundbite cautioning against a hasty acceptance of these results:

"....While some questioned the report -- Los Alamos Laboratory atmospheric scientist Petr Chylek said he has charted declining temperatures at the summit of Greenland's ice sheet between 1986 and 2003 -- environmentalists said it [the report] shows the need for stricter curbs on greenhouse gas emissions linked to global warming."

:-( Apart from the credential that he was from the Los Alamos Labs, sadly there is no information provided about how the reporter came to possess this piece of information -- whether it was in a scientific article or from a personal conversation -- so it did little to inform the article or contribute to it's understanding.