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  Yahoo News 2 Feb 07
Mankind to blame for global warming say scientists
By Gerard Wynn and Alister Doyle

Yahoo News 2 Feb 07
Warming to worsen droughts, floods, storms this century: UN panel
by Richard Ingham and Marlowe Hood

Yahoo News 3 Feb 07
Global warming man-made, will continue
By Seth Borenstein, AP Science Writer

Yahoo News 2 Feb 07
Global warming to continue for centuries
By Seth Borenstein, AP Science Writer

PARIS - Global warming is so severe that it will "continue for centuries," leading to a far different planet in 100 years, warned a grim landmark report from the world's leading climate scientists and government officials.

Yet, many of the experts are hopeful that nations will now take action to avoid the worst scenarios. They tried to warn of dire risks without scaring people so much they'd do nothing — inaction that would lead to the worst possible scenarios.

"It's not too late," said Australian scientist Nathaniel Bindoff, a co-author of the authoritative Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report issued Friday. The worst can be prevented by acting quickly to curb greenhouse gas emissions, he said.

The worst could mean more than 1 million dead and hundreds of billions of dollars in costs by 2100, said Kevin Trenberth of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado, one of many study co-authors.

He said that adapting will mean living with more extreme weather such as severe droughts, more hurricanes and wildfires.

"It's later than we think," said panel co-chair Susan Solomon, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration scientist who helped push through the document's strong language. Solomon, who remains optimistic about the future, said it's close to too late to alter the future for her children — but maybe it's not too late for her grandchildren.

The report was the first of four to be released this year by the panel, which was created by the United Nations in 1988. It found:

_Global warming is "very likely" caused by man, meaning more than 90 percent certain. That's the strongest expression of certainty to date from the panel.

_If nothing is done to change current emissions patterns of greenhouse gases, global temperature could increase as much as 11 degrees Fahrenheit by 2100.

_But if the world does get greenhouse gas emissions under control — something scientists say they hope can be done — the best estimate is about 3 degrees Fahrenheit.

_Sea levels are projected to rise 7 to 23 inches by the end of the century. Add another 4 to 8 inches if recent, surprising melting of polar ice sheets continues. Sea level rise could get worse after that. By 2100, if nothing is done to curb emissions, the melting of Greenland's ice sheet would be inevitable and the world's seas would eventually rise by more than 20 feet, Bindoff said.

That amount of sea rise would take centuries, said Andrew Weaver of the University of Victoria in Canada, but "if you're in Florida or Louisiana, or much of western Europe or southeast Asia or Bangladesh ... or Manhattan ... you don't want that," he said.

The report spurred bleak reactions from world leaders. "We are on the historic threshold of the irreversible," warned French President Jacques Chirac, who called for an economic and political "revolution" to save the planet.

"While climate changes run like a rabbit, world politics move like a snail: Either we accelerate or we risk a disaster," said Italy's environment minister, Alfonso Pecoraro Scanio.

And South Africa's Environmental Affairs Minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk said failure to act would be "indefensible."

In Washington, Bush administration officials praised the report but said they still oppose mandatory cuts in greenhouse gas emissions. The problem can be addressed by better technology that will cut emissions, promote energy conservation, and hasten development of non-fossil fuels, said Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman.

About three-fourths of Americans say they expect global warming will get worse, according to a recent AP-AOL News poll. However, other recent polls have found they don't consider it a top priority for the U.S. government.

But doing nothing about global warming could mean up to a 10-degree Fahrenheit temperature rise by the end of the century in the United States, said report co-author Jonathan Overpeck at the University of Arizona.

Elsewhere, the projected effects of global warming would vary on different parts of the globe. Temperatures would spike higher near the poles, according to the report.

Within 22 years — whether greenhouse gases are controlled or not — most of the Northern Hemisphere will see more high temperature extremes, the report showed. Places like Northern Africa will get even less rainfall.

This climate change "is just not something you can stop," said Trenberth. "We're just going to have to live with it. If you were to come up back in 100 years time, we'll have a different climate."

People experience the harshest effects of global warming through extreme weather — heat waves, droughts, floods, and hurricanes — said study co-author Philip Jones of Britain's University of East Anglia.

Those have increased significantly in the past decade and will get even worse in the future, he said.

Given all the dire predictions, why are scientists nearly all optimistic? They think their message is finally getting through to the people in charge.

United Nations environmental leaders are talking about a global summit on climate change for world leaders and they hope President Bush will attend.

"The signal that we received from the science is crystal clear," said Yvo de Boer, the executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, a multi-national body that tries to change policy to fight global warming. "That makes it imperative that the political response that comes from this crystal-clear science is as crystal-clear as well.

"I sense a growing sense of urgency to come to grips with the issue," de Boer said. "I think the major challenge is to further the negotiating agenda in a way that makes major players feel safe to step forwardly on this issue."

The major player that has at times been absent is the United States, the biggest emitter of greenhouse gases. "The world cannot solve the climate change problem without the United States," Achim Steiner, who heads the UN Environment Program, told The Associated Press. "The world is looking to the Bush administration and to the United States and how it has to be a key part" of solving global warming, he said.

De Boer was optimistic, there too. In an interview, he said that despite U.S. greenhouse gas emissions increasing 16 percent since 1990, change is afoot. Citing congressional interest and carbon dioxide emission limits requested by top industry CEOs, de Boer said: "I see a very important momentum building throughout the country."

Science writer Malcolm Ritter in New York contributed to this report.

Yahoo News 2 Feb 07
Mankind to blame for global warming say scientists
By Gerard Wynn and Alister Doyle

PARIS (Reuters) - Mankind is to blame for global warming, the world's top climate scientists said on Friday, sending governments a "crystal clear" warning they must take urgent action to avert damage that could last centuries.

The United Nations panel, which groups 2,500 scientists from more than 130 nations, predicted more droughts, heatwaves and a slow gain in sea levels that could continue for more than 1,000 years even if greenhouse gas emissions were capped.

The panel's report predicts a "best estimate" that temperatures would rise by between 1.8 and 4.0 Celsius (3.2 and 7.8 Fahrenheit) in the 21st century.

"Faced with this emergency, now is not the time for half measures. It is the time for a revolution, in the true sense of the term," French President Jacques Chirac said. "We are in truth on the historical doorstep of the irreversible."

The scientists said it was "very likely" -- or more than 90 percent probable -- that human activities led by burning fossil fuels explained most of the warming in the past 50 years.

That is a toughening of the position taken by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) last report in 2001, which judged a link as "likely," or 66 percent probable.

Many governments, U.N. agencies and environmental groups urged a widening of the U.N.'s Kyoto Protocol, which binds 35 industrial nations to cut emissions by 2012 but excludes top emitters led by the United States, China and India.

"The signal we've received from the scientists today is crystal clear and it's important that the political response is also crystal clear," said Yvo de Boer, head of the U.N. Climate Secretariat.

GREEN SUMMIT

He wants an emergency environment summit of world leaders this year to push for wider action. Kyoto has been weakened since the United States pulled out in 2001 and emissions by many backers of Kyoto are far above target.

The Bush administration played down the U.S. contribution to climate change although the country is the biggest single source of greenhouse gases, with a quarter of the world total.

"We are a small contributor when you look at the rest of the world," U.S. Energy Secretary Sam Bodman said of greenhouse gas emissions after the IPCC report. "It's really got to be a global discussion."

A 21-page summary of IPCC findings for policy makers outlines wrenching change such as a possible melting of Arctic sea ice in summers by 2100 and says it is "more likely than not" that greenhouse gases have made tropical cyclones more intense.

The report projects a rise in sea levels of between 18 and 59 centimeters (7 and 23 inches) in the 21st century -- and said bigger gains cannot be ruled out if ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland thaw.

Rising seas threaten low-lying islands, coasts of countries such as Bangladesh and cities from Shanghai to Buenos Aires.

Temperatures rose 0.7 degrees in the 20th century and the 10 hottest years since records began in the 1850s have been since 1994.

Greenhouse gases are released mainly by burning fossil fuels in power plants, factories and cars.

President Bush says Kyoto-style caps would harm the economy and that Kyoto should include developing nations. His policies will brake the growth of emissions but stop short of caps favored by most of his industrial allies. Democrats who control both houses of Congress want tougher action.

The president of Kiribati, a group of 33 Pacific coral atolls threatened by rising seas, said time was running out. "The question is, what can we do now? There's very little we can do about arresting the process," President Anote Tong said.

"There is no single solution," the International Energy Agency said. It wants more energy savings, more renewable energy, nuclear power and efforts to make fossil fuels cleaner.

Speaking to a meeting of scientists, environmental campaigners, foreign officials and business leaders, Chirac said the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) had insufficient power and should be overhauled and upgraded.

"Our aim must be to transform (the UNEP) into a fully fledged United Nations organization. This United Nations Environment Organization will carry the global ecological conscience," he said, suggesting the new body's name.

Yahoo News 3 Feb 07
Global warming man-made, will continue
By Seth Borenstein, AP Science Writer

PARIS - Scientists from 113 countries issued a landmark report Friday saying they have little doubt global warming is caused by man, and predicting that hotter temperatures and rises in sea level will "continue for centuries" no matter how much humans control their pollution.

A top U.S. government scientist, Susan Solomon, said "there can be no question that the increase in greenhouse gases are dominated by human activities."

Environmental campaigners urged the United States and other industrial nations to significantly cut their emissions of greenhouse gases in response to the long-awaited report by Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

"It is critical that we look at this report ... as a moment where the focus of attention will shift from whether climate change is linked to human activity, whether the science is sufficient, to what on earth are we going to do about it," said Achim Steiner, the executive director of the U.N. Environment Program.

"The public should not sit back and say 'There's nothing we can do'," Steiner said. "Anyone who would continue to risk inaction on the basis of the evidence presented here will one day in the history books be considered irresponsible."

The 21-page report represents the most authoritative science on global warming as the panel comprises hundreds of scientists and representatives. It only addresses how and why the planet is warming, not what to do about it.

Another report by the panel later this year will address the most effective measures for slowing global warming.

One of the authors, Kevin Trenberth, said scientists are worried that world leaders will take the message in the wrong way and throw up their hands.

Instead, world leaders should to reduce emissions and adapt to a warmer world with wilder weather, he said. "This is just not something you can stop. We're just going to have to live with it," said Trenberth, the director of climate analysis for the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo.

"We're creating a different planet. If you were to come up back in 100 years time, we'll have a different climate."

The scientists said global warming was "very likely" caused by human activity, a phrase that translates to a more than 90 percent certainty that it is caused by man's burning of fossil fuels.

That was the strongest conclusion to date, making it nearly impossible to say natural forces are to blame.

It also said no matter how much civilization slows or reduces its greenhouse gas emissions, global warming and sea level rise will continue on for centuries.

"Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, as is now evident from observations of increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice, and rising global mean sea level," the scientists said.

The report blamed man-made emissions of greenhouse gases for fewer cold days, hotter nights, killer heat waves, floods and heavy rains, devastating droughts, and an increase in hurricane and tropical storm strength — particularly in the Atlantic

Ocean. Sharon Hays, associate director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy at the White House, welcomed the strong language of the report. "It's a significant report. It will be valuable to policy makers," she told The Associated Press in an interview in Paris.

Hays stopped short of saying whether or how the report could bring about change in President Bush's policy about greenhouse gas emissions.

The panel predicted temperature rises of 2-11.5 degrees Fahrenheit by the year 2100. That was a wider range than in the 2001 report. However, the panel also said its best estimate was for temperature rises of 3.2-7.1 degrees Fahrenheit. In 2001, all the panel gave was a range of 2.5-10.4 degrees Fahrenheit.

On sea levels, the report projects rises of 7-23 inches by the end of the century. An additional 3 .9-7.8 inches are possible if recent, surprising melting of polar ice sheets continues.

The panel, created by the United Nations in 1988, releases its assessments every five or six years — although scientists have been observing aspects of climate change since as far back as the 1960s.

The reports are released in phases — this is the first of four this year. "The point here is to highlight what will happen if we don't do something and what will happen if we do something," said another author, Jonathan Overpeck at the University of Arizona.

"I can tell if you will decide not to do something the impacts will be much larger than if we do something."

As the report was being released, environmental activists repelled off a Paris bridge and draped a banner over a statue used often as a popular gauge of whether the Seine River is running high.

"Alarm bells are ringing. The world must wake up to the threat posed by climate change," said Catherine Pearce of Friends of the Earth. Stephanie Tunmore of Greenpeace said "if the last IPCC report was a wake up call, this one is a screaming siren."

"The good news is our understanding of the climate system and our impact on it has improved immensely. The bad news is that the more we know, the more precarious the future looks," Tunmore said in a statement. "There's a clear message to governments here, and the window for action is narrowing fast."

Associated Press Writer Angela Charlton contributed to this report.

Yahoo News 2 Feb 07
Warming to worsen droughts, floods, storms this century: UN panel
by Richard Ingham and Marlowe Hood

PARIS (AFP) - UN scientists delivered their starkest warning yet about global warming, saying fossil fuel pollution would raise temperatures this century, worsen floods, droughts and hurricanes, melt polar sea ice and damage the climate system for a thousand years to come.

In its first assessment in six years, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) dealt a crippling blow to the shrinking body of opinion that claims higher temperatures in past decades have been driven by natural, not man-made, causes.

The United Nations' paramount scientific authority on global warming highlighted a range of changes that had taken place in Earth's ice cover, rainfall patterns and permafrost and declared that most of the temperature rise over the past 50 years had "very likely" been caused by human activity.

This term means a certitude of more than 90 percent and signals an increase on the IPCC's previous assessment in 2001, whose probability was more than 66 percent.

By 2100 global average surface temperatures could rise by between 1.1 and 6.4 C (1.98 and 11.52 F) depending on how much carbon dioxide (CO2), the principal greenhouse gas, is in the air.

Within this range, the "best estimate" is Earth's surface temperatures will rise between 1.8 and 4 .0 C (3.2 and 7.2 F), the IPCC said. In 2001, it had forecast 1.4-5.8 C (2.5 to 10.4 F).

These figures are contained in a "summary for policymakers" in the IPCC's fourth review of the scientific evidence for global warming. They are derived from computer models based on how much CO2 enters the atmosphere.

Greenhouse gases disgorged into the atmosphere this century will cause climate disruptions "for more than a millennium" to come because of the time it takes for these molecules to degrade, the summary warned.

France and Britain swiftly declared time was running out. "We are on the verge of the irreversible," French President Jacques Chirac said. "Faced with this emergency, the time is not for half measures. The time is for a revolution -- a revolution of our awareness, a revolution of the economy. A revolution of political action."

British Environment Minister David Miliband said the report "is another nail in the coffin of the climate change deniers."

To avoid dangerous climate change, he said, "we will require the engagement not just of environmental ministers but heads of state, prime ministers and finance ministers."

Achim Steiner, executive director of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), agreed. The report "enables the world to now respond to climate change not by debating the science any more but by figuring out how on Earth we are going to live in a world with an environment change scenario that is two, three, four degrees of global warming," he said. Two to four Celsius is equivalent to 3.6 to 7.2 Fahrenheit.

IPCC Chairman Rajendra Pachauri joined a chorus of UN organizations calling for an extraordinary summit of world leaders to map out a strategy.

European Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas said industrialized nations should pledge to cut carbon emissions by 30 percent below 1990 levels by 2020.

Yvo de Boer, head of the UN Framework Convention for Climate Change (UNFCCC) underlined the importance of market mechanisms, especially carbon trading, for reining in CO2 levels.

The exhaustive IPCC study, culled from work by 2,500 scientists in more than 100 countries, sounded alarms about the impact of carbon pollution, mostly from the burning of oil, gas and coal. These fossil fuels release CO2, which traps heat from the sun instead of letting it radiate safely into space.

"We are in a sense doing things have not been done in 650,000 years," Pachauri said, referring to atmospheric concentrations of CO2. "You are able to see what the costs of inaction are."

The summary made these forecasts:

-- Sea levels would increase by 18 to 59 centimetres (7.1 to 23.2 inches) by 2100. In its 2001 report, the IPCC estimated a rise of 9.0 to 88 cms (3.5-35 inches). It says the revision is due to improved understanding as to how the oceans absorb heat.

-- Sea ice is predicted to shrink in both the Arctic and Antarctic. In some projections "Arctic late summer ice disappears almost entirely by the latter part of the 21st century".

-- Tropical cyclones are "likely" to become more intense, packing higher winds and rain.

-- Unseasonably warm weather, heatwaves and heavy rainstorms are "very likely" to become more frequent. Green groups demanded action to cut greenhouse gas emissions, especially by the United States, which accounts for a quarter of the global total.

"The IPCC report embodies an extraordinary scientific consensus that climate change is already upon us and that human activities are the cause," said WWF International director general James Leape.

Jan Kowalzig, climate and energy campaigner for Friends of the Earth, said the document " scientifically confirms the extent of this man-made crisis already hitting people around the world and makes bleak predictions for the future". He added: "We can no longer afford to ignore growing and compelling warnings from the world's leading experts."

Greenpeace climate and energy campaigner, Stephanie Tunmore, called the IPCC report a "screaming siren" of a warning. "The good news is our understanding of the climate system and our impact on it has improved immensely. The bad news is that the more we know, the more precarious the future looks," Tunmore said.

In Washington, the White House said the report was "very valuable" and the "conclusions are significant." But it offered no sign that President George W. Bush would shift focus away from voluntary, technology-driven initiatives to tackle climate change.

"The report will contribute to the body of knowledge that we have to study and understand the best way to meet the challenges," deputy White House spokesman Tony Fratto said.
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