20140226_TS

Source: IDEA Lab Productions

Date: 26/02/2014

Event: Thomas Stocker: "Mankind is a curious individual..."

Attribution: IDEA Lab Productions

People:

Professor Thomas Stocker: Co-Chair, IPCC Working Group I

Thomas Stocker: Mankind is a curious individual, if it comes to comprehending scientific units and measurements. I've observed that we have two completely different understandings for the same physical quantity, and that is temperature.

Give you an example. If you measure with a thermometer the temperature of your child, when he comes to you and says "I have a headache, I'm not feeling well", you take a temperature measurement. And your decision, of whether your kid goes to school tomorrow or not, depends on a temperature measurement that is precise to the first decimal point.

We have, however, another daily experience of temperature. Same physical quantity, but the daily variations of temperatures, when we go outside - that variation can be 10 degrees, easily, from one day to the next.

As it comes to global mean temperature, we are talking about changes, since 1900, still in the one-digit number - 0.8 degrees since 1900 - but global mean, over the entire planet. We're talking about 2, 3 or 4 degrees in the next hundred years, depending on the emissions scenario.

Now, if you take the vision of your outside temperature feeling, this is a small number. But that is not relevant - in fact, it's wrong. If you take the perception of temperature measurement with your child, that is the correct thing to do. And there it depends whether it's 0.1, 0.2, 0.3 degrees.