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Scientists await global study

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Thursday, February 1, 2007 12:00 a.m.

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An international panel of scientists plans to release a report Friday on global climate change that will likely affect environmental policy worldwide. Compiled by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the report will contain the most current knowledge surrounding climate change, according to Dan Vimont, a professor in the University of Wisconsin's School of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences. "The report in the whole is the most comprehensive and probably authoritative listing of our current understanding of climate change and its impact and possible mitigation strategies," Vimont said in an interview with The Badger Herald. John Young, another professor in the School of Atmosphere and Oceanic Sciences, said the IPCC's report summarizes the results of hundreds of top scientists working on climate-change research around the world. The report includes information about changes in sea level, temperature patterns and trends, as well as models for how things may change in the next 20 to 30 years. Created to gauge scientific and socioeconomic information about human-caused climate change like global warming, the IPCC releases this type of report every seven years, Vimont said, with the purpose of assessing the progression of science in the climate-change field. "It's all just a statement of what we know right now about global warming and how well we know it," Vimont said. Beyond working as a professor of climate processes at UW, Young directs the state climatology office, which tries to advise the state of Wisconsin about what climate variability and climate change mean for our state. Young said he sees scientific evidence that global warming has already begun. "I think that the evidence is just increasing steadily that global warming is underway," Young said. "It is likely to accelerate, and that has to be taken into account for our future planning." Vimont — whose research also centers on climate variations and change — agreed that global warming has become a reality, noting that eight of the 10 warmest years on record occurred in the last 10 years. The report is important, Vimont added, because it guides the international community in making policy for climate change. One example, Vimont said, is the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, which developed the Kyoto protocol as a result of an IPCC report. The Kyoto protocol is the international agreement aiming to curb emissions of carbon dioxide around the globe. According to Vimont, the agreement has been ratified by "essentially the entire global community, except the U.S.," the largest single emitter of carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels. According to Vimont, global warming is more than an environmental and economic issue — it is a social justice issue. Vimont said there is a discrepancy between who is causing the warming and who is most affected by it. "The rich nations are causing the warming," Vimont said. "And nations that are the least able to cope with this are likely to bear the brunt of its impacts." Vimont added he is looking forward to the release of the report on Friday. "This is the pinnacle of our understanding," Vimont said. "I'm curious to see what they have to say."


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