Geoengineering is conspicuously absent from the IPCC’s report
For all its risks, it could help keep the planet cool
KNOWING WHAT is going on in the climate requires observations taken from high orbit, the ocean depths and all sorts of places in between, as well as models which stretch the powers of the most super supercomputers. Knowing what is going on as scientists and government representatives fine-tune the bit of an IPCC report on which governments officially sign off—the “summary for policymakers” (SPM)—is more akin to reading tea leaves. Was the removal of “fossil fuels” from one of its chart captions a pernicious, if petty, piece of petrostate obfuscation? Or just a way to make the technical definition involved sufficiently broad? It is hard to say if you were not in the room.
This article appeared in the Science & technology section of the print edition under the headline “It that cannot be named”
From the August 14th 2021 edition
Discover stories from this section and more in the list of contents
Explore the editionDiscover more
Deforestation is costing Brazilian farmers millions
Without trees to circulate moisture, the land is getting hotter and drier
Robots can learn new actions faster thanks to AI techniques
They could soon show their moves in settings from car factories to care homes
Scientists are learning why ultra-processed foods are bad for you
A mystery is finally being solved
Scientific publishers are producing more papers than ever
Concerns about some of their business models are building
The two types of human laugh
One is caused by tickling; the other by everything else
Scientists are building a catalogue of every type of cell in our bodies
It has thus far shed light on everything from organ formation to the causes of inflammation