What’s in the latest United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report?  What does it mean for higher education?

Last fall we started reading the first installment (by Working Group I) on the climate crisis with our online book club.  Now two more parts have appeared – Working Group II: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability; Working Group III: Mitigation of Climate Change –  and we can read them together.  Everyone is welcome.

What, exactly, are we reading?

These reports are digests of the most cutting-edge climate science, written for all readers.  They represent the best current knowledge we have about the crisis.

Each report appears in three forms.  I’m going to focus on the shortest one, the Summary for Policymakers. Each one also has a Technical Summary, which I’ll work through.  There’s also a Full Report, but since that runs nearly 2,000 pages, I think we can consider it optional.

How will this online reading work?

Every Monday for the next month I’ll post about a chunk of the readings (see schedule below). I’ll summarize them as best I can and ask questions for discussion. Then you all can share your thoughts in comments for each post.  You can also share thoughts elsewhere – Twitter, your own blogs, Facebook, etc. – and I’ll try to capture them in the next post. We’ll also hold a live video discussion on the Future Trends Forum.

SCHEDULE

May 2 – Starting off with Working Group II: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability.

May 9 – Finishing Working Group II: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability.

May 16 – Starting Working Group III: Mitigation of Climate Change.

May 23 – Finishing Working Group III: Mitigation of Climate Change.

May 26 – live video conversation on the Future Trends Forum.

May 30 – conclusions and more thoughts.

After that our entire conversation will remain up on this blog, with each post tagged “IPCC2021.”

Here are some resources to aid in reading:

A trailer for “Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability”:

A trailer for “Mitigation of Climate Change”:

More:

Any questions or requests?  Otherwise, on to our reading!  Welcome aboard!  Our next reading post will be on Monday.

You can find out more about our book club, including each reading series going all the way back to 2013, right here.