THAILAND: Experts meet in to review latest U.N. climate report

Scientists and over 100 governments began a week of meetings on Monday (April 30) to review the third report on global warming by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). A draft of the solutions to be issued on Friday (May 4) warns that time for inexpensive fixes is running out because of a surge in greenhouse gas emissions, but green groups say the world has the means to cut emissions at little cost. The survey is the third this year by the IPCC following two gloomy reports on global warming. "There is a substantial amount of new knowledge which has been assessed and I am very happy to see that the report itself dealt very faithfully with the approved outline which the panel had agreed to at the start of this process," IPCC Chair Rajendra Pachauri said in his opening speech. In the IPCC's first report, issued in February, it said it was at least 90 percent certain that mankind was to blame for warming. The second report on April 6 warned of more hunger, droughts, heatwaves and rising seas. The third report lays out solutions such as capturing and burying emissions from coal-fired power plants, a shift to renewable energies such as solar and wind power, more use of nuclear power, more efficient lighting and insulation of buildings. But the latest report estimates that stabilising greenhouse gas emissions will cost between 0.2 percent and 3.0 percent of world gross domestic product by 2030, depending on the stiffness of curbs on rising emissions of greenhouse gases. "The IPCC is a scientific body that essentially carries out an assessment of all aspects of climate change and then it is up to the negotiators and governments to then decide what they want to do on the basis of the findings of our reports," said Pachauri. The big question is whether governments will act. "The IPCC doesn't have any muscle, it has grey matter. But you know the muscle will have to come from somewhere else. We don't have any muscle." A vice-chair of the IPCC said last week that it might take more disasters such as Hurricane Katrina that battered New Orleans in 2005 to spur politicians to do more. More than 1,000 amendments have been proposed to the draft 24-page summary for policymakers. Some countries complain that it is hard to understand and too laden with scientific jargon. ENDS

ITN Source | April 30, 2007

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