UN Panel on Climate Change Issues Report Forecasting a Warmer Century

(2007-02-02 18:01:00.0)

On February 2, a U.N.-panel of 2,500 top climate scientists from more than 130 nations said mankind's carbon emissions are adding to the natural climate cycle, and predicted more droughts, heat waves and a slow rise in sea levels that could continue for more than 1,000 years even if those emissions were capped. The panel’s report predicts a “best estimate” that temperatures would rise by between 3.2 and 7.8 Fahrenheit in the 21st century. A scientific panel reported to the United Nations that to head off the worst of climate change, governments must pour tens of billions of dollars more than they are into clean-energy research and enforce sharp rollbacks in fossil-fuel emissions.The U.S. government's research spending, for one, should be "probably tripled or more," a panel leader said. Ban has pledged to make climate change a top priority and said the United Nations is the natural arena to tackle the problem. He had considered a summit but his staff recently said this would not happen. Instead the United Nations was preparing for a U.N. framework convention on climate change conference to be held in Bali, Indonesia, in December, Ban said. Ban said, "The world needs a more coherent system of international environmental governance. Unfortunately my generation has been somewhat careless in looking after our one and only planet but I am hopeful that is finally changing." The United States is the world’s top greenhouse gas emitter and accounts for about a quarter of the global total, ahead of China, Russia and India. Thirty-five industrialized countries bound by the Kyoto treaty, which obliges average cuts in emissions of 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2008-12, account for just 30 percent of world emissions. In January, the United States acknowledged the serious challenge that mitigation and adaptation to climate change will present to all nations.