"PBS Newshour" invited climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe to discuss climate change predictions following the release of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report on Monday.
The IPCC, an organization of experts convened by the United Nations, published an extensive report warning about the disastrous effects that global warming predictions are expected to have on humanity by the early 2030s. Many social media users have called out these claims, pointing out that past climate doom predictions have been wrong for decades.
However, Hayhoe insisted the predictions were not wrong and instead the "uncertainty" comes from humanity.
"The previous predictions were not wrong. The uncertainty is us. The predictions were for what will happen depending on the choices we make. Prior to the Paris Agreement in 2015, the world was heading towards a future that was between four to five degrees Celsius warmer than today," Hayhoe said. "You might say, well, that does not sound that bad, it‘s four or five degrees warmer. But think of it in terms of the human body. The temperature of the planet has been as stable as that of the human body over the course of human civilization. If our body is running a fever of one or two degrees Celsius, or four to six degrees Celsius, that is life-threatening."
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