IPCC Backtracks on Extinctions

Climate science is a religion, some say, with scientists toeing the party line, nothing but slimy leftists intent on world control, only looking for funding of their next grant proposal.

Science is always skeptical, others way. It is a critical, open endeavor, a self-correcting process that hones in on the harsh and inconvenient truth.

So which is it?

Well, this definitely falls in the latter category:

"UN Backtracks: Will Global Warming Really Trigger Mass Extinctions?" by Axel Bojanowski, der Spiegel, March 26, 2014

A few quotes from and about the 5AR WGII report on Impacts, that will come out on Monday:

The second part of the IPCC's new assessment report is due to be presented next Monday in Yokohama, Japan. On the one hand, a classified draft of the report notes that a further "increased extinction risk for a substantial number of species during and beyond the 21st century" is to be expected. On the other hand, the IPCC admits that there is no evidence climate change has led to even a single species becoming extinct thus far.

At most, the draft report says, climate change may have played a role in the disappearance of a few amphibians, fresh water fish and mollusks. Yet even the icons of catastrophic global warming, the polar bears, are doing surprisingly well. Their population has remained stable despite the shrinking of the Arctic ice cap.

The draft report includes a surprising admission by the IPCC -- that it doubts its own computer simulations for species extinctions. "There is very little confidence that models currently predict extinction risk accurately," the report notes. Very low extinction rates despite considerable climate variability during past hundreds of thousands of years have led to concern that "forecasts for very high extinction rates due entirely to climate change may be overestimated."

In the last assessment report, Climate Change 2007, the IPCC predicted that 20 to 30 percent of all animal and plant species faced a high risk for extinction should average global temperatures rise by 2 to 3 degrees Celsius (3.6 to 5 degrees Fahrenheit). The current draft report says that scientific uncertainties have "become more apparent" since 2007.

None of this means there aren't very many threats:

"Even in the ocean, we see that habitats are shifting to the north," says another leading IPCC author, Hans-Otto Pörtner of the Alfred Wegener Institute of the Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research. The Norwegians were pleased about the many new species of fish off their coast. Fifty-two new species were also counted in the North Sea. But, Pörtner says, "near the equator, there is nothing to replace what has gone. The seas are becoming impoverished there."

Let it not be said that climate scientists aren't trying to get at the truth.