The IPCC delivers its starkest warning yet about climate change

AT A KEY moment in the film “Jaws”, police chief Martin Brody, having known that a shark attack was possible, witnesses one actually happen. The director, Steven Spielberg, underlines the transformative nature of Brody’s shock with a shot which makes inspired use of a camera technique called a “dolly zoom”. Nothing on screen actually moves. But Brody’s guilty face seems to rush towards the audience, taking up more and more of the frame. At the same time his surroundings, rather than being displaced, are revealed more fully.

The report released on August 9th by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the first part of the IPCC’s sixth assessment report (AR6), presents the spectacle of the possible becoming real in a similarly unnerving way, mixing close-up alarm with wide-angle context. It is a starker and blunter document than its predecessor in AR5, which was published in 2013. The statements in the summary expressing “high confidence” handily outnumber those that offer only “medium confidence”. Last time around the two categories were roughly level pegging.