The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change recently released its Sixth Assessment Report, described as the most up-to-date assessment of the global climate system and climate change.
The news is not good.
The report calls human-influenced climate change “unequivocal” and says the effects of climate change caused by global warming are being seen around the world.
The report also says global surface temperature will continue to increase until at least the mid-century under all emissions scenarios, and that a goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees above pre-Industrial levels will fail unless “deep reductions” in greenhouse gas emissions occur.
And, according to our next guest, the projections and data outlined in the report echo climate predictionsmade in the early 70’s by a Soviet climatologist named Mikhail Budyko.
Dr. Andrei Lapenas is a climate scientist and Professor of Geography and Planning at the University at Albany. He was an author of the first IPCC report in 1990, and was also a mentee of Mikhail Budyko.
In an interview with WAMC’s Lucas Willard, Lapenas explains the methods behind his mentor’s predictions made almost 50 years ago.
