GENEVA, SWITZERLAND — The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its 48th major assessment report on Tuesday, a 2,400-page document representing the collaborative work of 847 scientists across 93 countries over four years, confirming once again and with even greater certainty than the previous 47 confirmations that the climate is changing due to human activity and that significant consequences are either underway or imminent, a conclusion that was met with widespread media coverage, several strongly worded op-eds, a trending hashtag, and the same number of meaningful policy reversals as the previous 47 reports, which is zero.
“It’s happening,” said lead author Dr. Sandra Pryce, a climate scientist at the University of Edinburgh who has been studying atmospheric systems for 24 years and who paused approximately eight minutes into the press conference to retrieve a travel guitar from under the podium and begin playing a slow, mournful G chord. “I hope everyone understands that it is happening. We have now said it is happening forty-eight times. The guitar is new. I am trying some things.”
Dr. Pryce played the G chord for approximately thirty seconds. The journalists present described it as “haunting” and “technically proficient for someone who appears to have learned recently.”
What The Report Says
The report, titled AR7: This Is Still Happening, We Promise — a departure from the traditionally neutral scientific titling convention that the IPCC communications director acknowledged was “a bit of a tonal shift” — documents accelerating sea level rise, increasing frequency of extreme weather events, ecosystem collapse in sixteen bioregions, and what scientists describe as a “narrowing window” for intervention that has, in the 33 years since the first IPCC report, gone from “wide open” to “ajar” to “closing” to “mostly closed” to, in this year’s edition, “please see Figure 7.4, which is just a picture of a door.”
Figure 7.4 is indeed a picture of a door, mostly closed, with a small wedge of light visible at the bottom. It has been widely shared on social media. Several users have captioned it with a crying laughing emoji. The scientists who created it have not found this particularly funny, but have acknowledged that the engagement numbers are the highest of any IPCC graphic since 2013.
The Response
Reaction to the report followed what climate scientists have taken to calling “The Pattern,” a predictable cycle observed across all 47 previous assessments:
Day 1: Report releases. Media coverage is extensive. Headlines are alarming. Several world leaders issue statements expressing “deep concern.”
Day 2: Op-eds appear. Some are urgent. Some dispute the urgency. One is about whether climate scientists are being too negative and should consider “leading with hope,” which elicits a response from twelve climate scientists who have spent their careers studying the collapse of ice sheets and who find the concept of leading with hope “a rich suggestion.”
Day 3: A different news story happens. Coverage transitions.
Day 4: The report is available as a PDF that very few people will download.
Day 5 through the release of the next report: The climate continues to change.
Dr. Pryce’s New Approach
Dr. Pryce, who has led or contributed to eleven IPCC reports, said she began learning guitar in January as “an experiment in processing.” She has learned four chords and composed a short instrumental piece that she played in its entirety during the Q&A portion of the press conference when a reporter asked if she ever feels like giving up.
“I don’t feel like giving up,” she said, finishing the piece. “I feel like the work matters enormously and that the gap between what we know and what the world does about what we know is one of the defining tragedies of human civilization. But I also feel that playing guitar is very good for the nervous system. I recommend it.”
The IPCC’s 49th report is scheduled for 2030. The data collection period has already begun. Dr. Pryce says she hopes to have learned a barre chord by then.
“F is very difficult,” she noted. “But I’ll get there.”
Supposedly News will cover the 49th report. We will do our best. We have also, recently, been learning guitar.