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Abstract

In the fourth assessment report of the UN Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC), the robust finding (defined as that which ‘holds under a variety of approaches, methods, models and assumptions, and is expected to be relatively unaffected by uncertainties’ (IPCC, 2007, AR4 SYR - Topic 6)) was that ‘warming of the climate system is unequivocal,’ and that ‘most of the global average warming over the past 50 years is very likely due to anthropogenic Green House Gases (GHG) increases’ (IPCC, 2007, AR4, 6.1). The IPCC also identified the building industry as the one with the most climate mitigation potential (Table 2.1). When Time Magazine (Kluger, 2007) ran a special feature called The Global Warming Survival Guide, buildings accounted for the largest share of U.S. emissions, noting that:

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Law, T. (2013). The State of the World. In: The Future of Thermal Comfort in an Energy- Constrained World. Springer Theses. Springer, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-00149-4_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-00149-4_2

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