Michael Schlesinger, a climatologist at the University of Illinois, has been immersed in both climate science and policy analysis for decades. Lately he has been working with younger researchers on papers aiming to clarify some of the basic questions about the human contribution to recent warming and to find a way for established and emerging industrial powers to divvy up the task of cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

I got to spend a few minutes with Schlesinger during a recent visit to the university to give a lecture. In the video above he summarizes the findings in these two new papers:

The first paper adds to the literature pointing to humans as the dominant cause of warming since 1950, but also finds that the sensitivity of the climate system to the greenhouse-gas buildup could be lower than some other recent studies found. [ Jason Samenow of the Washington Post has posted on the debate between Schlesinger and other scientists over this question.]

(If Emily Cross‘s name looks familiar, that may be because she was a guest blogger here, weighing in from the climate talks in Cancún, Mexico, in 2010.)

The paper on a “fair plan” for climate action describes a timetable for emissions cuts in established and emerging industrial powers that could keep warming beneath the two-degree (Celsius) threshold that many countries have deemed unacceptably hazardous. (For a refresher on the technicalities and issues surrounding that threshold, revisit my 2009 post, “The Two-Degree Solution.”)

Schlesinger sees the papers, taken together, as providing good news, implying that the task of limiting warming could be more feasible than many analyses have concluded.

But never count him among those saying there’s any reason to relax. He acknowledges the enduringly wide range of estimates of the extent of warming from the greenhouse buildup but stresses that the system is already set up for centuries of warming, with further delay simply adding to the task of successive generations.

Read the papers, which are both in open journals, listen to his pitch and then weigh in.