The Final Report Is Out - And It's Not Pretty

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Under the header "Roasted World," We summarized prepublication coverage of the much anticipated second IPCC climate report, which would be detailing regional impacts of climate change . With that summary report out today, it turns out that some of the contributors got heated up from the all night editing process. Via the Washington Post:- "Agreement came after an all-night session during which key sections were deleted from the draft and scientists angrily confronted government negotiators who they feared were watering down their findings." And to now one's surprise, "The United States, China and Saudi Arabia raised many of the objections to the phrasing, often seeking to tone down the certainty of some of the more dire projections." (Those of you who were around for the drafting of the Kyoto Treaty will recall OPEC nations objecting then as well.) Bringing all this home for US readers (where the lesson most needs to sink in), we recommend this article from the LA Times, where they lay out the regional implications, drawing on a corroborating study that was just published:- "The driest periods of the last century — the Dust Bowl of the 1930s and the droughts of the 1950s — may become the norm in the Southwest United States within decades because of global warming, according to a study released Thursday. The research suggests that the transformation may already be underway. Much of the region has been in a severe drought since 2000, which the study's analysis of computer climate models shows as the beginning of a long dry period." Peak Oil and Peak Objections are about to correlate with Peak Drought, leading to Peak Reality Facing. We are about to enter the "what should we do now" phase.