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  Yahoo News 7 Apr 07
Scientists get last say in climate study
By Seth Borenstein, AP Science Writer

Yahoo News 6 Apr 07
Bleakest climate report approved
By Seth Borenstein, AP Science Writer

Straits Times 7 Apr 07
Billions face dire risk from global warming, say experts
Many could go thirsty as water supplies dry up
More will die of floods, droughts and disease as early as 2050
By Straits Times Europe Bureau, Neo Hui Min

Channel NewsAsia 6 Apr 07
Global warming to slam world's poor, may unleash major species extinction

Channel NewsAsia 6 Apr 07
Asia faces floods, drought, disease: UN climate report

BRUSSELS - Asia faces a heightened risk of flooding, severe water shortages, infectious disease and hunger from global warming this century, the UN's top climate panel said on Friday.

The region is confronted by a 90-percent likelihood that more than a billion of its people will be "adversely affected" by the impacts of global warming by the 2050s, the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said.

Its estimates, in a major report unveiled in Brussels, say the magnitude of climate- change effects will vary according to the size of the world's population, energy use and the level of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, which determines the rise in global temperature.

But under any scenario, the world's most populous region will be badly hit. Here are the major findings:

-- 120 million to 1.2 billion people in Asia will experience increased water stress by 2020, and 185 to 981 million by 2050.

-- Cereal yields in South Asia could drop in some areas by up to 30 percent by 2050.

-- Even modest rises in sea levels will cause flooding and economic disruption in densely-populated mega-deltas, such as the mouths of the Yangtze in China, the Red River in China and Vietnam, and the Ganges-Brahmaputra delta in low-lying Bangladesh.

-- Cholera and malaria could increase, thanks to flooding and a wider habitat range for mosquitoes.

-- In the Himalayas, glaciers less than four kilometres (2.5 miles) long will disappear entirely if average global temperatures rise by 3 degrees Celsius (5.4 Fahrenheit). This will initially cause increased flooding and mudslides followed by an eventual decrease in flow in rivers that are glacier-fed.

-- Per capita water availability in India will drop from around 1,900 cubic metres (66, 500 cubic feet) currently to 1,000 cu. metres (35,000 cu. ft.) by 2025.

-- Some 30 percent of Asian coral reefs, which sustain a large percentage of marine life, are expected to be lost in the next 30 years, although this will occur as a result of multiple stresses and not just climate change. - AFP/ir

Channel NewsAsia 6 Apr 07
Global warming to slam world's poor, may unleash major species extinction

BRUSSELS - Climate change is set to inflict damage in every continent, hitting poor countries hardest and threatening nearly a third of the world's species with extinction, UN experts warned Friday.

Global warming will affect much of life on Earth this century, the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said in a landmark report whose drafting was marked by an angry row.

Damage to Earth's weather systems from greenhouse gases will change rainfall patterns, punch up the power of storms and boost the risk of drought, flooding and stress on water supplies, the IPCC said. The consequences will be adverse or in some scenarios even catastrophic, depending chiefly on how much carbon gas is spewed into the atmosphere from burning oil, gas and coal.

"Poor people are the most vulnerable and will be the worst hit by the impacts of climate change. This becomes a global responsibility," the IPCC's chairman, Rajendra Pachauri, declared.

Up to 30 percent of animal and plant species will be vulnerable to extinction if global temperatures rise by 1.5-2.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 to 4.5 Fahrenheit), the IPCC said. "It is very likely that all regions will experience either declines in benefits or increases in costs for increases in temperature greater than 2 to 3 degrees" (C), or 3.6 -5.4 F, over 1990 levels, according to a summary for policymakers agreed by the IPCC.

The summary's draft was fiercely disputed during a week of negotiations, ending with a marathon 24-hour session.

Publication was delayed on the final day after several countries objected to tough wording, sparking charges of political interference from one delegate.

At US insistence, summary drafters dumped a paragraph that said North America was " expected to experience severe local economic damage and substantial ecosystem, social and cultural disruption," delegates said.

Saudi Arabia and China also insisted on other changes to water down the draft.

"Some of the objections were not scientifically based," said Joseph Alcamo of the Centre for Environmental Systems Research at Germany's University of Kassel, who was lead author of the chapter on Europe. "You could say that the debate here is a foretaste of the difficulty that lies ahead in terms of policy."

The summary accompanies a massive 1,400-page report which said there was now clear evidence that climate change was already happening, through loss of Arctic ice, mountain glaciers, thawing permafrost and other recently-observed phenomena.

Martin Parry, co-chair of the IPCC's working group, said "the doubt has been removed" that climate change was already on the march. "On all continents there is a climate change signal, it is affecting animals and plants and on a global level too," he said.

Bettina Menne, a World Health Organisation (WHO) specialist who was lead author on the chapter of health, said 150,000 deaths could be "attributed directly" to climate change in 2000 alone, due to malnutrition and diarrhoea.

Looking to the future, the main report predicts that billions of people will face water scarcity and hundreds of millions will likely go hungry, mainly in the poorest regions least to blame for causing the problem.

Poor tropical countries will be hit worst, it says. Worsening water shortages in thirsty countries, malnutrition caused by desiccated fields, property damage from extreme weather events and the spread of disease by mosquitoes and other vectors will amount to a punishing bill that is beyond the ability of vulnerable countries, especially in Africa, to pay.

Biodiversity and natural habitat are in for a hammering.

Even a modest increase in temperatures will bleach many coral reefs, reduce part of eastern Amazonia to a parched savannah, thaw swathes of the northern hemisphere's permafrost and change seasons for plant pollination and animal reproduction.

Green groups sounded the alarm, demanding immediate action to tackle fossil-fuel emissions and help for poor countries to cope with the threat.

"This is a glimpse into an apocalyptic future," said Greenpeace International's Stephanie Tunmore. "The Earth will be transformed by human-induced climate change, unless action is taken soon and fast."

"It is a looming humanitarian catastrophe, ultimately threatening our global security and survival" said Friends of the Earth's Catherine Pearce.

The European Commission said the new report powerfully backed its goal of setting a maximum rise of 2 C (3.6 F) in global temperatures since pre-industrial times. – AFP/ir

Straits Times 7 Apr 07
Billions face dire risk from global warming, say experts
Many could go thirsty as water supplies dry up
More will die of floods, droughts and disease as early as 2050
By Straits Times Europe Bureau, Neo Hui Min

BRUSSELS - TOP climate scientists issued their bleakest assessment yet on global warming yesterday, with a warning that billions of people could go thirsty as water supplies dry up and millions more may starve as farmlands become deserts.

Poor tropical countries that are least to blame for causing the problem will be worst hit, said the report. Small island states, Asia's big river deltas, the Arctic, and sub- Saharan Africa are also at risk. Global warming could also rapidly thaw Himalayan glaciers that feed rivers from India to China, and bring heat waves to Europe and North America.

The dire warnings came from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The final text of a 21-page Summary for Policymakers was agreed on after an all-night session marked by serious disputes.

Scientists from more than 100 countries made up the panel. Their report forms the second of a four-part climate assessment, with the final section to be released early next month in Bangkok. Its findings are approved unanimously by governments and will guide policy on issues such as extending the United Nation's Kyoto Protocol, the main plan for capping greenhouse gas emissions, beyond 2012.

The grim 1,400-page report issued yesterday said change, widely blamed on human emissions of greenhouse gases, was already under way in nature.

The IPCC noted that damage to the earth's weather systems was changing rainfall patterns, punching up the power of storms and boosting the risk of drought, flooding and stress on water supplies.

Some scientists even called the degree-by-degree projection a 'highway to extinction'. Add 1 deg C to the earth's average temperatures and between 400 million and 1.7 billion more people cannot get enough water. Add another 1.8 deg C and as many as two billion people could be without water, and about 20 per cent to 30 per cent of the world's species face extinction. More people will also start dying because of malnutrition, disease, heat waves, floods and droughts.

This could happen as early as 2050.

'Changes in climate are now affecting physical and biological systems on every continent,' said the report.

University of Michigan ecologist Rosina Bierbaum, former head of the United States' IPCC delegation, said: 'It is clear that a number of species are going to be lost.'

Mr Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the IPCC, said: 'It's the poorest of the poor in the world, and this includes poor people even in prosperous societies, who are going to be the worst hit. 'This does become a global responsibility in my view.'

Still, some scientists accused governments of watering down the forecasts. They said China, Russia and Saudi Arabia had raised most objections overnight, seeking to tone down some findings. Other participants also said the US, which pulled out of the Kyoto Protocol in 2001 saying it was too costly, had toned down some passages.

Dr Pramod Kumar Aggarwal, one of the authors of the report, told The Straits Times that temperature increases could lead to crop failure and rising prices, with dire consequences for the poor. 'In Asia, you are talking about millions or billions of people,' he said.

WITH ADDITIONAL INFORMATION FROM REUTERS

Yahoo News 6 Apr 07
Bleakest climate report approved
By Seth Borenstein, AP Science Writer

As the world gets hotter by degrees, millions of poor people will suffer from hunger, thirst, floods and disease unless drastic action is taken, scientists and diplomats warned Friday in their bleakest report ever on global warming.

All regions of the world will change, with the risk that nearly a third of the Earth's species will vanish if global temperatures rise just 3.6 degrees above the average temperature in the 1980s-90s, the new climate report says. Areas that now have too little rain will become drier.

Yet that grim and still preventable future is a toned-down prediction, a compromise brokered in a fierce, around-the-clock debate among scientists and bureaucrats. Officials from some governments, including China and Saudi Arabia, managed to win some weakened wording.

Even so, the final report "will send a very, very clear signal" to governments, said Yvo de Boer, the top climate official for the United Nations, which in 1988 created the authoritative climate change panel that issued the starkly worded document.

And while some scientists were angered at losing some ground, many praised the report as the strongest warning ever that nations must cut back on greenhouse gas emissions.

The report is the second of four coming this year from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations network of 2,000 scientists.

The new document tries to explain how global warming is changing life on Earth; the panel's report in February focused on the cause of global warming and said scientists are highly confident most of it is due to human activity. All four reports must be unanimously approved by the 120-plus governments that participate, and all changes must be approved by the scientists.

That edict made for a deadline-busting contentious final editing session that was closed to the public. However, The Associated Press witnessed the hectic final 3 1/2 hours of objections and conflict.

At one point, Chinese and Saudi Arabian delegates tried to reduce the scientific confidence level about already noticeable effects of global warming. They lower the confidence level from 90 percent to 80 percent.

Scientists objected, and one lead author from the United States, NASA's Cynthia Rosenzweig, left the building after filing an official protest. "There is a discernible human influence on these changes" that are already occurring through flooding, heat waves, hurricanes and threats to species, she said.

Under a U.S.-proposed compromise, the final report deleted any mention of the level of confidence about global warming's current effects. And that may have saved the day, according to some scientists who said the report had appeared doomed over that issue.

There were other disputes where scientists lost out:

_Instead of saying "hundreds of millions" would be vulnerable to flooding under certain scenarios, the final document says "many millions."

_Instead of suggesting up to 120 million people are at risk of hunger because of global warming, the revised report refers to negative effects on subsidence farmers and fishers.

Often it was the U.S. delegation who stood with scientists and helped reach compromise, said Stanford University scientist Stephen Schneider, a frequent critic of the Bush administration's global warming policies.

British scientist Neil Adger said he and others were disappointed that government officials deleted parts of a chart that highlights the devastating effects of climate change with every rise of 1.8 degrees in temperature.

Some scientists bitterly vowed never to take part in the process again.

Still, Adger and other scientists and even environmental groups hailed the final report as the strongest ever. "This is a glimpse into an apocalyptic future," the Greenpeace environmental group said of the final report.

The tone of the report is urgent, noting those who can afford the least get hit the most by global warming. "Don't be poor in a hot country, don't live in hurricane alley, watch out about being on the coasts or in the Arctic, and it's a bad idea to be on high mountains with glaciers melting," said Schneider, the Stanford scientist who was one of the study author's.

Africa by 2020 is looking at an additional 75 million to 250 million people going thirsty because of climate change, the report said. Deadly diarrheal diseases associated with floods and droughts will increase in Asia because of global warming, the report said.

The first few degrees increase in global temperature will actually raise global food supply, but then it will plummet, according to the report.

"The poorest of the poor in the world — and this includes poor people in prosperous societies — are going to be the worst hit," said Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. "People who are poor are least able to adapt to climate change."

But even rich countries, such as the United States say that the report tells them what to watch for. James Connaughton, the head of the White House Council on Environmental Quality noted that food production in North America would rise initially, but so will increased coastal flooding.

The head of the U.S. delegation, White House associate science adviser Sharon Hays, said a key message she's taking home to Washington is "that these projected impacts are expected to get more pronounced at higher temperatures," she said in a conference call from Brussels.

"Not all projected impacts are negative." Schneider said a main message isn't just what will happen, but what already has started: melting glaciers, stronger hurricanes, deadlier heat waves, and disappearing or moving species.

It all can be traced directly to greenhouse gases from the burning of fossil fuels, according to the report.

Martin Parry, who conducted the tough closed-door negotiations, said that with 29,000 sets of data from every continent include Antarctica, the report firmly and finally established "a man-made climate signal coming through on plants, water and ice."

"For the first time, we are not just arm-waving with models," he said.

But many of the worst effects aren't locked into the future, the report said in its final pages. People can build better structures, adapt to future warming threats and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, scientists said.

"There are things that can be done now, but it's much better if it can be done now rather than later," said David Karoly of the University of Oklahoma, one of the report authors. "We can fix this," Schneider said.

AP Correspondent Arthur Max contributed to this report

Yahoo News 7 Apr 07
Scientists get last say in climate study
By Seth Borenstein, AP Science Writer

Two distinctly different groups, data-driven scientists and nuanced offend-no-one diplomats, collided and then converged this past week. At stake: a report on the future of the planet and the changes it faces with global warming.

An inside look at the last few hours of tense negotiations at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reveals how the diplomats won at the end thanks to persistence and deadlines.

But scientists quietly note that they have the last say.

Diplomats from 115 countries and 52 scientists hashed out the most comprehensive and gloomiest warning yet about the possible effects of global warming, from increased flooding, hunger, drought and diseases to the extinction of species.

The 23-page summary certainly didn't sound diplomatic. But it was too much so, scientists said.

In the past, scientists at these meetings felt that their warnings were conveyed, albeit slightly edited down.

But several of them left Friday with the sense that they had lost control of their document. At one point, NASA's Cynthia Rosenzweig filed a formal protest and left the building, only to return, make peace and talk in positive tones.

Others talked about abandoning the process altogether.

"There was no split in the science — they were all mad," said John Coequyt, who observed the closed-door negotiations for the environmental group Greenpeace.

But Yvo de Boer, a diplomat who is the top climate official for the United Nations, countered that it was a "difficult choice."

If it stayed the way scientists originally wrote it, some countries would not accept nor be bound by the science in the document. By changing the wording, "in exchange the countries are bound to this," de Boer said.

The report doesn't commit countries to action, like the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, but those involved agree that the science is accurate and that global warming is changing the planet and projected to get much worse.

Here's how negotiations went, based on interviews and an unusual opportunity for The Associated Press to observe the last 3 1/2 hours of debate.

The four-day meeting was supposed to end Thursday afternoon but was extended to Friday morning. A news conference was scheduled for 10 a.m. Friday to release the report, but the document wasn't finished until after that time. Interpreters had been sent home at 2 a.m. Friday due to financial issues.

Some pages had not been discussed and some of the most critical issues were still not solved as small group negotiations stalled.

Panel co-chairman Martin Parry of the United Kingdom acknowledged that some parts of the document were eliminated "because there was not enough time to work it through as well."

With such deadline problems, some countries — especially China, Saudi Arabia and at times Russia and the United States — were able to play hard ball.

China and Saudi Arabia wanted to lower the level of scientific confidence (from more than 90 percent to 80 percent) that the report had in a statement about current global warming effects and it looked like they would win because they wouldn't accept the original wording.

That's when Rosenzweig protested and walked. A U.S.-based compromise saved the day, avoiding any mention of scientific confidence.

A comparison of the original document, written by scientists, and the finished paper showed major reductions in forecasts for hunger and flooding victims.

Instead of "hundreds of millions" of potential flood victims, the report said "many millions." A key mention of up to 120 million people at risk of hunger because of global warming was eliminated.

Yet, scientists have their fallback: a second summary that consists of 79 densely written, heavily footnoted pages. The "technical summary," which will eventually be released to the public but was obtained by The Associated Press, will not be edited by diplomats.

The technical summary, Rosenzweig said, contains "the real facts." Some of its highlights, not included in the 23-page already-released summary:

• "More than one sixth of the world population live in glacier- or snowmelt-fed river basins and will be affected by decrease of water volume." And depending on how much fossil fuels are burned in the future, "262-983 million people are likely to move into the water stressed-category" by 2050.

• Global warming could increase the number of hungry in the world in 2080 by anywhere between 140 million and 1 billion, depending on how much greenhouse gas is emitted into the air over the next few decades.

• "Overall a 2 to 3 fold increase of population to be flooded is expected by 2080."

• Malaria, diarrhea diseases, dengue fever, tick-borne diseases, heat-related deaths will all rise with global warming. But in the United Kingdom, the drop in cold-related deaths will be bigger than the increase in heatstroke related deaths.

• In eastern North America, depending on fossil fuel emissions, smog will increase and there would be a 4.5 percent increase in smog-related deaths.

• Because global warming will hurt the poor more, there will be more "social equity" concerns and pressure for governments to do more.

Associated Press writer Arthur Max contributed to this report.
links
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change website with a summary of the report (PDF file)
Related articles on Global: Climate change
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