Hit Me Baby One More Time

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issues its first assessment report in 1990. Subsequent efforts have been released every 5 to 6 years for the past two decades, culminating in 2007's Fourth Assessment Report. And now the IPCC has indicated (through its report on the Future of the IPCC from the recent 28th meeting in Budapest) that the crowd has called out for more. The Fifth Assessment Report is to be rolled out between 2013 and 2014. That's still a long way off, but I foresee the AR5 going the way of the AR4: slightly wider ranges of uncertainty with respect to climate projections (part of the persistent trend toward increasing uncertainty associated with IPCC work), but no fundamental shift or ground-breaking discovery that would cause us to look at the issue and its challenges in a new light. This makes be wonder what benefits various nations see in continung such reporting over such short time intervals (i.e., there appears to be absolutely no correlation between scientific evidence and willingness of nations to pursue greenhouse gas emissions reductions) and will a time ever come when the IPCC publishes a report that says "well, six years have past and we don't really have anything new to say - see you next time".