The IPCCs Fifth Assessment Report: a historical perspective

On 27 September 2013 the The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change (IPCC) published its highly anticipated summary for
policymakers, in advance of its fifth assessment report that will
be published in early 2014. This special espisode of the podcast,
explores briefly the origins of the organisation that produced
this landmark report and, in more detail, the difficult
international negotiations that have used the IPCCs findings
since its inception. This historical overview ends with the
question whether we can learn anything from previous problems of
atmospheric pollution, in this case the Great London Smog and the
ozone hole, to tackle global warming. The podcast concludes with
a brief interview of historical climatologist Dagomar Degroot and
his response to the summary of the fifth assessment report from
the perspective of climate history. Dagomar is a PhD Candidate in
environmental history at York University in Toronto, Canada.


Music credits: Alice In the City by Doxent Zsigmond and
Improvisation On Friday by Alex. Available from ccMixter. Forward
by Northbound, available from Free Music Archive