FRANCE/FILE: World's top climate scientists say global warning is man-made

The world's top climate scientists said on Friday (February 2) global warming was man-made, spurring calls for urgent government action to prevent severe and irreversible damage from rising temperatures. The United Nations panel, which groups 2,500 scientists from more than 130 nations, predicted more droughts, heatwaves, rains and a slow gain in sea levels that could last for more than 1,000 years. 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 from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) last report in 2001, which judged a link as "likely", or 66 percent probable. Possible signs range from drought in Australia to record high winter temperatures in Europe. "In the next two decades using previously assessed IPCC scenarios, we would expect, based on projections, that a warming of about 0.2 degrees Celsius per decade would be expected, even if the concentrations of all the greenhouse gases in aerosols have been kept constant at year 2000 levels," said Susan Solomon, co-chair of the IPCC, which unveiled the report at a news conference in Paris on Friday (February 2). The Kyoto Protocol is the main plan for capping emissions of greenhouse gases until 2012 but it has been severely weakened since the United States, the top source of greenhouse gases, pulled out in 2001. Emissions by many backers of Kyoto are far over target. 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 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, within a likely range from 1.1 to 6.4 Celsius. 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. Many backers of Kyoto, binding 35 industrial nations to cut greenhouse gas emissions to 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2008-12, want outsiders led by the United States and big developing nations such as China and India to get involved. The report projects a rise in sea levels of between 18 and 59 centimetres (7 and 23 inches) in the 21st century -- and said bigger gains could not be ruled out if ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland thaw.

ITN Source | February 2, 2007