UN expert van Ypersele visits NTNU for climate change talk
“We need to make changes to offset the effects of climate change,” Vice-chairman Jean-Pascal van Ypersele of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a UN organization, told an attentive audience at NTNU on Tuesday.
Van Ypersele, a Belgian professor on climate change, warned that climate change now threatens the safety of our world. He said that the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has increased dramatically over the past 80 years as the acidity of the oceans has risen and polar ice caps have begun to melt. These will soon begin to affect human ways of life, he cautioned.
Professor van Ypersele's organization, the IPCC, was a co-recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 for its efforts to provide information on the science behind climate change as well as its impact on our world. Founded in 1988, the IPCC publishes reports every five to seven years. Van Ypersele noted that a new report is due at the end of this year, and will be followed by two more reports in 2014. These will be the most complete reports on climate change to date and will be available at the IPCC website.
For more information, visit IPCC online: www.ipcc.ch