As a new chairman is appointed to the Intergovernmental Panel on climate Change (IPCC) a University of Manchester climate expert has said headline projections from the organisation about future warming are ‘wildly over optimistic.’

In an article published today in Nature Geoscience Professor Kevin Anderson says that IPCC claims that “global economic growth would not be strongly effected” are unrealistic and that if we are to meet the 2C warming target wealthy and high emitting individuals will need to make dramatic cuts in the energy they use and in the material goods they consume - they will have to accept immediate and fundamental changes to their way of life - at least until the transition away from fossil fuels is complete.

Professor Anderson also says that many climate scientists are censoring their own work in order for their results to be more politically palatable, something that does society a “grave disservice.”

Professor Anderson’s claims are a wake-up call to Professor Hoesung Lee, who was installed at the new IPCC chair last week and are well timed in the lead-up to the climate negotiations in Paris, which take place later this year.

A statement last year from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said that “to keep a good chance of staying below 2 °C, and at manageable costs, our emissions should drop by 40–70 per cent globally between 2010 and 2050, falling to zero or below by 2100”, and that mitigation costs would be so low that “global economic growth would not be strongly affected.”