Co-founder of UN climate panel dies at 82
STOCKHOLM, Sweden — Bert Bolin, a Swedish climate scientist and co-founder of the Nobel Peace-winning U.N. panel on climate change, has died at age 82.
As early as the 1950s, Bolin produced research about the circulation of carbon in nature that remains relevant to the debate on climate change. He played a key role in communicating the dangers of climate change and served as the first chairman of the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change from 1988 to 1998.
The panel won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for helping alert the world to the threat of global warming.
Visiting Sweden in December after accepting the Nobel Prize in Norway, Al Gore said: "Bert, you set up the framework for the IPCC, and without your contributions, we would not have come to where we are today."
When he learned he had won the Nobel, Gore first called IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri, and then Bolin, he said.
Bolin died Sunday in a Stockholm hospital from stomach cancer, but was active until three days before his death, said his colleague Henning Rodhe, a professor in chemical meteorology at Stockholm University.
