'Apocalyptic' climate change report approved

An international global warming conference today approved a report warning of dire threats to the Earth and to mankind unless the world adapts to climate change and halts its progress.

Agreement came at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in Brussels after an all-night session during which key sections were deleted from the draft, as scientists angrily confronted government negotiators who they feared were watering down their findings.

The report addresses risks ranging from the threat of increased hunger to the extinction of human beings. “This is a glimpse into an apocalyptic future,” Greenpeace said of the final report.

“It has been a complex exercise,” said Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the IPCC.

Several scientists objected to the editing of the final draft by government negotiators but in the end agreed to compromises.

The climax of five days of negotiations was reached when the delegates removed parts of a key chart highlighting devastating effects of climate change that kick in with every rise of one degree Celsius, and in a tussle over the level of scientific reliability attached to key statements.

There was little doubt about the science, which was based on 29,000 sets of data, much of it collected in the past five years.

“For the first time we are not just arm-waving with models,” Martin Perry, who conducted the gruelling negotiations, told reporters.

The US, China and Saudi Arabia raised many of the objections to the phrasing, often seeking to tone down the certainty of some of the more dire projections.

The final IPCC report is the clearest and most comprehensive scientific statement to date on the impact of global warming, mainly caused by man-induced carbon dioxide pollution.

It said up to 30% of the Earth’s species face an increased risk of vanishing if global temperatures rise 2C above the average in the 1980s and 90s.

Areas that now suffer a shortage of rain will become even drier, adding to the risks of hunger and disease, it said. The world will face heightened threats of flooding, severe storms and the erosion of coastlines.

Negotiators studied the 21-page draft meant to be a policy guide for governments. The summary pares down the full 1,500-page scientific assessment of the evidence of climate change so far and the impact it will have on the Earth’s most vulnerable people and ecosystems.

More than 120 nations attended the meeting. Each word was approved by consensus, and any change had to be approved by the scientists who drew up that section of the report.

Though weakened by the deletion of some elements, the final report “will send a very, very clear signal” to governments, said Yvo de Boer, the UN’s top climate official.

The summary will be presented to the G8 summit of the world’s richest nations in June, when the European Union is expected to renew appeals to US President George Bush to join in international efforts to control emissions of fossil fuels.

This year’s series of reports by the IPCC are the first in six years from the prestigious body of some 2,500 scientists, formed in 1988. Public awareness of climate change gave the IPCC’s work unaccustomed importance and fuelled the intensity of the closed-door negotiations during the five-day meeting.

“The urgency of this report prepared by the world’s top scientists should be matched by an equally urgent response from governments,” said Hans Verolme, director of the global climate change programme of the World Wild Fund for Nature.

“Doing nothing is not an option,” he said.

During the final session, the conference snagged over a sentence that said the impact of climate change was already being observed on every continent and in most oceans.

“There is very high confidence that many natural systems are being affected by regional climate changes, particularly temperature increases,” said the statement on the first page of text.

But China insisted on removing the word “very”, injecting a measure of doubt into what the scientists argued were indisputable observations. The report’s three authors refused to go along with the change, resulting in an hours-long deadlock that was broken by a US compromise to delete any reference to confidence levels.

It is the second of four reports from the IPCC this year; the first report in February laid out the scientific case for how global warming is happening. This second report explains what the effects of global warming will be.

European Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas said the report will spur the EU’s determination to curb greenhouse gas emissions.

“The world needs to act fast if we are to succeed in stabilising climate change and thereby prevent its worst impacts,” Mr Dimas said in a statement.

For the first time, the scientists broke down their predictions into regions, and forecast that climate change will affect billions of people.

Africa will be hardest hit. By 2020, up to 250 million people are likely to exposed to water shortages. In some countries, food production could fall by half, the report said.

North America will experience more severe storms with human and economic loss, and cultural and social disruptions. It can expect more hurricanes, floods, droughts, heat waves and wildfires, it said.

Parts of Asia are threatened with massive flooding and avalanches from melting Himalayan glaciers. Europe also will see its Alpine glaciers disappear. Australia’s Great Barrier Reef will lose much of its coral to bleaching from even moderate increases in sea temperatures, the report said.