Spain conference to produce book on global warming

A week-long conference aimed at producing a definitive guide to global warming began today.

Representatives from 145 countries and leading scientists expect tense discussions on what should be included and what is being left out of the last of four UN reports to be issued this year by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

The document to be published on Saturday sums up in a few dozen pages the scientific consensus on how rapidly the Earth is warming and the effects already observed; the impact it could have for billions of people; and what steps can be taken to keep the planet’s temperature from rising to disastrous levels.

“It will not cost the earth to save the Earth;” as little as 0.1 percent of the gross global product, said Janos Pasztor, of the UN Environmental Program, a parent body of the IPCC.

A summary of about 25 pages will be negotiated line-by-line this week, then adopted by consensus.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will attend the launch of the report in Valencia, which will provide the factual underpinning for a crucial meeting next month in Bali, Indonesia. That conference will begin exploring a new global strategy to curb greenhouse gas emissions after the 2012 expiration of the first phase of the Kyoto Protocol, the landmark agreement that assigned binding reduction targets to 36 countries.

Mr Pasztor said this week’s report, synthesising the three scientific reports released earlier this year, will be the one document that the thousands of delegates at Bali “will be packing in their suitcases and carrying in their back pockets.”

This week’s report will be the first to include a brief chapter on “robust findings and key uncertainties,” in which the authors pick out what they believe are the most relevant certainties and doubts about climate change.

“We summarise which kind of things we are very confident in and what is much less certain. That can be quite a complex discussion,” said Bert Metz, one of about 40 authors. Some delegations want to stress certain points that others would prefer to avoid, he said.

Among the uncertainties cited in an early draft are: the lack of data from key areas of the world, conflicting studies on the effects of cloud cover and carbon soaked up by oceans, and projections on how planners in developing countries will factor climate change into their decisions.

The IPCC already is under criticism for the selectivity and language of the policy summaries, which have been softened on several points because of objections by countries like the United States, China and some big oil producing nations like Saudi Arabia.

Today the World Wildlife Fund for Nature, one of several environmental groups invited to observe the process, said “governments cut vital facts and important information” during the negotiations.

Without naming them, the WWF accused governments of “politically inspired trimming” of facts from the summaries, which it said diluted the urgency to make deep cuts in emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.

Scientists say the full reports on which the summaries are based, each comprising more than 1,000 pages, remain valid, and that their own presence during the discussions ensures the scientific integrity of the summaries.

Yvo de Boer, the UN’s top climate official, said getting governments to agree on the summaries is a critical element of the IPCC’s value.