UN climate report: Human activity primary influence on warming

Climate Cast
MPR meteorologist Paul Huttner joins The Daily Circuit each week to talk about the latest research on our changing climate and the consequences we're seeing here in Minnesota and worldwide.
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An upcoming climate report from the United Nations will find that the basic facts about climate are more established than ever, and that scientists are nearly certain human activity is responsible for global temperature increases.

From the New York Times:

"It is extremely likely that human influence on climate caused more than half of the observed increase in global average surface temperature from 1951 to 2010," the draft report says. "There is high confidence that this has warmed the ocean, melted snow and ice, raised global mean sea level and changed some climate extremes in the second half of the 20th century."

The draft comes from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a body of several hundred scientists that won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007, along with Al Gore. Its summaries, published every five or six years, are considered the definitive assessment of the risks of climate change, and they influence the actions of governments around the world. Hundreds of billions of dollars are being spent on efforts to reduce greenhouse emissions, for instance, largely on the basis of the group's findings.

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MPR meteorologist Paul Huttner and John Abraham, professor of thermal sciences at the University of St. Thomas, join The Daily Circuit live from the Minnesota State Fair in an extended version of Climate Cast, our weekly conversation about the science of climate change.

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