As a collective of grown-up and alert citizens we now need to stop making silly excuses for the UN Climate Panel, letting them off the hook. After all, they had all the resources in the world and all the best science and scientists at their disposal, as well as 8 years, if for some reason you don’t want to count all of the 33 years since their 1988 inception.
And yet this is what they present to the world.
Within a field of study that even by their own admission is the very key field for our future, for the natural planet and human civilisation alike, they chose to retain the omission of several of their designated Tipping Elements in the Climate System having now passed their Tipping Points.
If they were the Indian Subcontinent, this would be like denying their historic collision with Asia while watching the resulting Himalaya tower up to almost 9000 meters.
It would be like India still denying having ever collided with the larger continent, while constantly saying it’s very near, it’s close at hand now, and almost imminent. We can almost see the coast!
Now, if the Physical Science Basis uses the term Tipping Points a number of times, and even admits that the flow of ice is irreversible for millennia, why does the mammoth climate report have to say explicitly that we passed several Tipping Points already? Because it is not a mediocre high school essay written after a rough week. Because it supposedly is the best that our civilisation could muster after knowing about the Greenhouse Effect for 125 years. And because its title is Physical Science Basis, and we need to know the physical basis of the biggest challenge on Earth, without giant omissions like this and without comforting, woolly, cuddling words to sugarcoat this epic bitter pill.
We need a map that shows our planet as is.