VARIOUS: The United Nations' climate change panel is due to issue a new report on global warming

Melting glaciers, polar bears wondering across the arctic and submerged pacific islands are some of the indicators of climate change seen in recent years. This week, scientists and government officials from some 130 countries have convened at the Spanish port city of Valencia to discuss global warming. At the end of the week-long talks, The United Nations' intergovernmental panel on climate change (IPCC) is due to issue a new report, summarising the findings of three reports they have issued this year on the causes, consequences and possible remedies for climate change. Kirtsy Hamilton, an international policy advisor on climate change said the report will reinforce to governments the seriousness of global warming. "The IPCC report is very important, it's their fourth assessment report, and it's 17 years after their first one, so it's an entire generation worth of scientific knowledge it's becoming ever more confident about the observations they were making way back in 1990 . So clearly that's just a solid reinforcement for governments and everybody on the planet about the urgency of the matter", Hamilton, currently a consultant at the UK business council for sustainable energy (BCSE), said on Wednesday (November 14). A draft circulated ahead of the conference blames human activities for rising temperatures and says cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, mainly from burning fossil fuels, are needed to avert more heat waves, melting glaciers and rising seas. Global warming is already under way and its effects will be negative overall, says the report. "The evidence is overwhelming that climate change is happening and that the cause of it is to do with human activity. So we have overwhelming scientific evidence", said Elliot Morley, British MP and president of Globe International, a forum for legislators from around the world to discuss policy and actions on global warming. Morley, who is also a former environment minister, addressed on Wednesday a conference in London on the latest scientific and policy developments on climate change. "Of course there are still issues that we need to know about, the pace of change, and how far, how fast, although I have to say the 4th report did suggest that the some of the impacts of climate change are happening faster than what was originally calculated", Morley added. The IPCC was set up in 1988 by the U.N. Environment Programme and the World Meteorological Organization to give governments scientific advice about climate change. Run from Geneva, it draws on work by about 2,500 climate scientists from more than 130 nations and has issued three reports so far this year, totalling more than 3,000 pages. The previous set of reports was in 2001. The IPCC was awarded the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with former U.S. Vice President Al Gore. In February, the IPCC squarely blamed mankind for global warming, saying it was "very likely" or more than 90 percent probable that human activities led by burning fossil fuels had caused most of the warming in the past half century. It said warming was "unequivocal" and projected a "best estimate" that temperatures would rise by 1.8 to 0 degrees Celsius (3.2-7.2 degrees Fahrenheit) this century. In April, the IPCC outlined the likely impacts of warming and said rising temperatures could lead to more hunger, water shortages and extinctions of animals and plants. The April report suggested crop yields could drop by 50 percent by 2020 in some countries and projected a steady shrinking of Arctic sea ice in summers. By the 2080s, millions of people will be threatened by floods because of rising sea levels, especially around river deltas in Asia and Africa and on small islands. In the third report issued in May, the IPCC said costs of action could be moderate but that time was running out to avert the worst effects. The toughest scenario would require governments to ensure global greenhouse gas emissions start falling by 2015. Such is the importance of the Valencia meeting that a previously scheduled conference of world environment ministers, now set to start in Bali, Indonesia, on Dec. 10, was delayed 10 days to give the climate panel time to finish its work. In Bali, ministers will try to approve a two-year timetable to work out a successor to the U.N.'s Kyoto Protocol, the main U.N. plan to curb warming until 2012. The treaty obliges 36 industrial nations to cut emissions by at least 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2008-12. A new deal would aim to involve outsiders led by the United States and China, the world's top two emitters which have no Kyoto goals. "What's happening now politically is that in Bali, in December, governments will come together and they will start the process of agreeing what they are going to do between now and 2009 which is, broadly speaking, the deadline for setting the next round of commitments on international action on climate change", Hamilton told Reuters. "I think there is an unprecedented level of international attention to the issue at the moment, you've had the Al Gore movie and the Oscar, you've had the stern report on teh economics of climate change, you've also had a backdrop of very high oil prices which has focused attention on some of the more sustainable and cleaner none-oil energy options and you've had a range of other things coming together plus the IPCC report and that really has created plus these timetables, what are we going to do after 2012, and that really has created a huge degree of attention," Hamilton added. There is still time to slow warming, the IPCC draft says, and it need not cost too much. Even the toughest targets for curbing emissions would cost less than 0.12 percent per year of world economic output. But environmentalists warn that there have already been attempts by some countries to dilute some of the findings to be included in the policy-making summary, which could in turn lead to the Bali meeting being less ground-breaking than hoped. rz/JRC

ITN Source | November 16, 2007

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