South Pole "keeping its cool" -- IPCC

The United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has a mandate to deliver a comprehensive assessment of human-induced climate change every few years.

So, far this year it has delivered summaries of the first three parts of its Fourth Assessment Report, AR4.

The latest summary report, released on Friday, suggests agricultural practices that result in an increase in soil carbon content can help stop climate change.

While some of the headlines announcing the release of its first summary in February suggested the end of the world was nigh, the report was actually fairly undramatic.  It concluded that the world has warmed by 0.74°C over the past 100 years and that while temperatures at the Arctic have increased at almost twice the global average there has been no warming at all at the Antarctic.  That's right.  No global warming at the South Pole.

Furthermore, while Al Gore predicted a six metre rise in sea level in his documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, the inconvenient truth in the February summary from the IPCC was that sea levels are unlikely to rise by more than 59cm by 2099.

The next IPCC summary report, issued in early April, focused on potential impacts of climate change and suggested a significant loss of biodiversity by 2020 in some ecologically-rich sites including the Great Barrier Reef, Kakadu wetlands and alpine areas.

Last Friday the third summary report was released with a focus on how to combat climate change.  This report was released after exhaustive discussions in Bangkok involving scientists and bureaucrats from 120 countries.

The focus in this May report is on how to reduce greenhouse gas emissions such that severe climate change can be avoided.

I've always considered it somewhat pretentious to believe that humans can actually stop climate change given that the earth's climate has always change, but it's certainly worthwhile considering the various mechanisms possible to reduce atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide which are elevated as a result of the burning of fossil fuels.

Amongst a long list of regulatory options, the report suggests financial incentives and more regulation of agriculture including to maintain or increase soil carbon content and more efficient use of fertilisers.

So far the Australian government has focused on banning broad scale tree clearing to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, but this policy may have worked against increasing soil carbon content.  Indeed perennial grasses, not woody weeds, generally favour the build-up of soil carbon.

The Australian government's carbon accounting system may need to be expanded to consider the various ways in which carbon can be sequester on-farm if the latest IPCC recommendations are going to be implemented.

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