Global warming: from diagnosis to action

The Paris Agreement, which aims at restraining Global Warming well below a 2°C increase with respect to pre-industrial era temperatures, will come into force in 2020. Signed during the 21^st session of the Conference of the Parties (COP21), the agreement relies heavily on diagnoses provided by our scientific community via successive reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). I will look back over the duality that exists between scientific expertise and political decision-making ever since human kind became aware of its influence on the climate, in particular thanks to the results obtained from Antarctic ice sheet. I shall then examine to what extent the Paris Agreement can be considered a success and where lie the weaknesses.

Emeritus Director of Research of the CEA, Jean Jouzel, dedicated a large part of his scientific career at this institute to reconstituting climates of the past through analysis of the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets. He participated, as main author, in the second and third reports of the IPCC (co-laureate for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007) of which he was member of the board and Vice-Chair of the scientific working group (2002-2015). Together with Claude Lorius, he received the CNRS Gold Medal award in 2002. In 2012, he received both the Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation Award and the Vetlesen Prize, which is considered to be the « Nobel Prize for Geophysics and Earth Sciences ».