HOST:
Greetings, intelligent viewers. On today’s program, we’ll go to the media to review, degree by degree, climate change impact scenarios of the future that necessitate urgent drastic action today. Then, we’ll look at
two more articles on how effective mitigation can and must take place. At the recent United Nations Climate Change Conference that just ended in Cancún, Mexico, leaders focused on the goal of keep the global average temperature rise below ２ degrees Celsius to avoid most serious climate change impacts. This includes the ０.７ degrees increase already reached since pre-industrial times.
Others, however, called for even stronger greenhouse gas reduction goals to keep warming below １.５ degrees. Researchers tell us that we are on track to a ４ degree temperature rise by ２０６０ and
６ degrees by ２１００.
What do these temperature increases mean？How do they translate to changes we can see around us？
Award winning British author Mark Lynas is a specialist on climate change who wrote three books on the subject: 『High Tide: News from a Warming World,』 『Carbon Calculator,』 and 『Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet.』 Mr. Lynas’s book 『Six Degrees』 won the prestigious Royal Society Prize
for Science Books and, along with 『High Tide,』 are listed on the 『Environment top ２５ of all time』 bestseller list. 『Six Degrees』 was also the basis of a television documentary by National Geographic. The following is Mr. Lynas’ article which was written for 『The Guardian,』 a UK-based major newspaper, on April １４, ２００９, a slightly updated précis of the book, 『Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet.』 The article is titled, 『Climate Change Explained: The Impact of Temperature Rises.』

Ref: http://www.marklynas.org/２００９/５/５/climate-change-explained-the-impact-of-temperature-rises