Have you noticed recently that every day seems to bring a new report on the condition of the global climate? These grim tidings all emanate from the same source, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which, by all appearances, is singularly addicted to the climatic equivalent of da capo. One can understand Macbeth: "Bring me no more reports! Let them fly all!" But what on Earth, quite literally, is going on?
The IPCC is a standing committee of international experts established about a dozen years ago. Under the joint auspices of the World Meteorological Organisation and the United Nations Environment Programme, its purpose is to provide an informed institutional framework through which a reliable consensus, an authoritative "best guess", can be arrived at on the thorny questions of global warming and the enhanced greenhouse effect.
Because it taps the genius of several hundred, even thousand, international experts, the IPCC could not hope to focus on its task if all sat down together. It therefore uses working groups, or WGs, imaginatively labelled I, II and III, to expedite its work.
WG I is concerned with the scientific side of things - with understanding the scientific basis for climate change, the extent of human influence, and the reliability of the computer models that try to see into the future.
WG II, on the other hand, looks at the environmental, sociological and political impacts associated with any predicted change in climate. And the third Group, WG III, concerns itself with what might be done to alleviate the situation - with the options open to our political leaders to mitigate the likely effects of climate change.
WG I issued its so-called Third Assessment Report (the other two were in 1990 and 1995) on January 20th. It was called Climate Change 2001: The Scientific Basis, and was launched in Shanghai because one of the co-chairmen is Chinese.
WG II's third report is called Climate Change 2001: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability, and was released, also with much attendant publicity, in Geneva last Friday. There will no doubt be more media fanfare in April when it will be the turn of WG III to tell its story.
To make matters even more confusing, the gist of the likely conclusions of all three groups leaked into the public domain about 12 months ago, each hitting the media headlines as it did so. But at least the totality of this plethora of reports and leaks provides us with an authoritative consensus on the global climate, warning us grimly: Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow Creeps in this petty pace from day to day . . .