Marlowe Hood, Yahoo News 17 Oct 07;
UN chief Ban Ki-moon demanded that politicians next month smash the deadlock on tackling global warming, saying a report issued on Saturday by a Nobel-winning climate panel "has set the stage for a real breakthrough."
"We cannot afford to leave Bali without such a breakthrough," the secretary general said, referring to a conference running on the Indonesian island from December 3-14, tasked with setting a strategy for deepening cuts in greenhouse-gas emissions.
Climate change, he warned, was the "defining challenge of our age."
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report "contains one overarching message for all of us: that there are real and affordable ways to deal with climate change," said Ban.
Ban warned of the potential of "catastrophe" from global warming.
The IPCC report unveiled in this Spanish city on Saturday said evidence of a human role in the warming of the planet was now "unequivocal" and the effects on the climate system could be "abrupt or irreversible."
Retreating glaciers and loss of snow in Alpine regions, thinning Arctic summer sea ice and thawing permafrost shows that climate change is already on the march, it said.
IPCC Chairman Rajendra Pachauri highlighted several alarming findings, pointing to the threat from rising sea levels that menaced small island nations and hundreds of millions of people living in low-lying deltas.
Pachauri said the report -- a guide to policymakers for years to come -- implied a new moral imperative.
"We need a new ethic by which every human being realises the importance of the challenge we are facing and starts to take action through changes in lifestyle and attitude," he said.
He added: "Every country in the world has to be committed to a shared vision and a set of common goals and actions that will help us move toward a much lower level of emissions.
Green groups said the IPCC synthesis report, while containing no new science compared with three massive volumes issued earlier this year, had pushed home the dangers of warming more forcefully than in previous assessments.
"This is the strongest document the IPCC has produced," said Hans Verolme, director of the World Wide Fund for Nature's (WWF's) Global Climate Change Program.
During five days of negotiations, the United States repeatedly challenged passages emphasizing the level of threat posed by climate change, objecting that the wording was imprecise.
The "scientific definition" of the dangers of climate change "is lacking, and so we are operating within the construct of, again, strong agreement among world leaders that urgent action is warranted," said Jim Connaughton, chairman of White House's Council on Environmental Quality.
The United States is the only major developed economy that has refused to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, which requires industrialised countries to make targeted commitments on curbing their greenhouse gases.
The document, which boils down the IPCC's massive 3,000-page study into just 23 pages, is designed to guide politicians facing tough decisions on cutting pollution from fossil fuels, shifting to cleaner energy, bolstering defences against extreme weather, and other issues set to intensify due to climate change.
Grim climate change report prompts UN call for 'breakthrough'
Marlowe Hood, Yahoo News 17 Nov 07;
The world's top scientific authority on climate change published on Saturday its starkest warning yet, declaring that the impact of global warming could be "abrupt or irreversible" and no country would be spared.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon seized on the report by the Nobel-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to demand that politicians next month smash the deadlock on tackling the greenhouse-gas peril.
The historic report "has set the stage for a real breakthrough," said Ban, referring to a key conference running on the Indonesian island of Bali from December 3-14.
"We cannot afford to leave Bali without such a breakthrough," he said, as he described climate change as the "defining challenge of our age."
Ban said global warming bore the seeds of "catastrophe" but stressed that there was also hope.
The IPCC report was an "overarching message for all of us: that there are real and affordable ways to deal with climate change," he said.
The new report is intended to act as a guide to policymakers for years to come.
It encapsulates the findings of three massive assessments, published earlier this year, on the evidence for global warming; its impacts; and the options for tackling the emissions that cause it.
The report said notably:
-- Evidence of a human role in the warming of the planet is now "unequivocal" and the effects on the climate system could be "abrupt or irreversible."
-- Retreating glaciers and loss of snow in Alpine regions, thinning Arctic summer sea ice and thawing permafrost shows that climate change is already on the march.
-- By 2100, global average surface temperatures could rise by between 1.1 C (1.98 F) and 6.4 C (11.52 F) compared to 1980-99 levels, while sea levels will rise by between 18 and 59 centimetres (7.2 and 23.2 inches).
-- Heatwaves, rainstorms, tropical cyclones and surges in sea level are among the events expected to become more frequent, more widespread or more intense this century.
-- "All countries" will be affected by climate change, but those in the forefront are poor nations, especially small island states and developing economies where hundreds of millions of people live in low-lying deltas.
-- Reducing emissions can be met at moderate cost relative to global GDP, but the window of opportunity for quickly reaching a safer, stable level is closing fast.
"We need a new ethic by which every human being realises the importance of the challenge we are facing and starts to take action through changes in lifestyle and attitude," said IPCC Chairman Rajendra Pachauri.
"Every country in the world has to be committed to a shared vision and a set of common goals and actions that will help us move toward a much lower level of emissions.
Green groups said the Valencia document had rammed home the dangers of warming more forcefully than in any other assessment issued in the 19-year history of the IPCC.
"This is the strongest document the IPCC has produced," said Hans Verolme, director of the World Wide Fund for Nature's (WWF's) Global Climate Change Program.
During five days of negotiations, the United States repeatedly challenged passages emphasizing the level of threat posed by climate change, objecting that the wording was imprecise.
The "scientific definition" of the dangers of climate change "is lacking, and so we are operating within the construct of, again, strong agreement among world leaders that urgent action is warranted," said Jim Connaughton, chairman of White House's Council on Environmental Quality.
The Bali conference, taking place under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), is tasked with setting a "roadmap" of negotiations for intensifying cuts in carbon emissions beyond 2012, when current pledges run out under the Kyoto Protocol.
Carbon pollution, emitted especially by the burning of oil, gas and coal, traps heat from the Sun, thus warming the Earth's surface and inflicting changes to weather systems.
Emissions are now spiralling, driven especially by carbon dioxide (CO2) spewed from coal-fired plants in fast-growing China and India, and Kyoto's present commitments will not even dent the problem.
Reducing emissions implies a cost in converting to cleaner energy or more efficient energy use.
The cost of such a switch is a mighty political hurdle, even though experts say the cost of inaction will be many times higher just a few decades from now.
U.N. says new report must spur climate change action
Joe Ortiz, Yahoo News 17 Nov 07;
Governments must do more to fight global warming, spurred by a new U.N. scientific report and damage to nature that is already as frightening as science fiction, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said on Saturday.
"This report will be formally presented to the (U.N. Climate Change) Conference in Bali," Ban told delegates from more than 130 nations in Valencia and praised them for agreeing an authoritative guide to the risks of climate change on Friday.
"Already, it has set the stage for a real breakthrough -- an agreement to launch negotiations for a comprehensive climate change deal that all nations can embrace," he said.
Ban singled out the United States and China, the world's top two emitters of greenhouse gases, which have no binding goals for curbs, as key countries in the process. He welcomed initiatives by both and urged them to do more.
"I look forward to seeing the U.S. and China playing a more constructive role starting from the Bali conference," Ban told a news conference. "Both countries can lead in their own way."
Ban said he had just been to see ice shelves breaking up in Antarctica and the melting Torres del Paine glaciers in Chile. He also visited the Amazon rainforest, which he said was being "suffocated" by global warming.
"I come to you humbled after seeing some of the most precious treasures of our planet -- treasures that are being threatened by humanity's own hand," he said.
"These scenes are as frightening as a science fiction movie," Ban said. "But they are even more terrifying, because they are real."
Delegates at U.N. climate change talks reached agreement on the 26-page document about the risks of warming, blamed mainly on human burning of fossil fuels, after several days of talks.
The document, which summarizes the latest scientific knowledge on the causes and effects of climate change, will be put before environment ministers in Bali, Indonesia, next month -- a meeting likely to agree a two-year strategy to negotiate a successor to the Kyoto Protocol whose first period ends in 2012.
The summary says human activity is causing rising temperatures and that deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, mainly from burning fossil fuels, are needed quickly to avert more heat waves, melting glaciers and rising sea levels.
BALI MEETING
Scientists and government officials from the 130-state Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have boiled down the findings of three reports of more than 3,000 pages issued this year on the risks of warming.
Delegates from the environmental movement appeared relatively happy the synthesis had not watered down the message from the scientific advisers, as they had feared it might.
"The strong message of the IPCC can't be watered down - the science is crystal clear. The hard fact is we have caused climate change, and it's also clear that we hold the solution ... in our hands," said Hans Verolme, Director of environmental group WWF's Global Climate Change Program.
Delegates said the U.S. delegation had been at the centre of some of the fiercest debate this week.
Sources close to the discussions said the U.S. had tried to change or even remove a key section of the report which lists five main reasons for concern about the effects of warming.
"This has been a very tough week and we've had to debate and defend everything we wanted but the draft report that we submitted has remained intact and has even had additions made in terms of emphasis and even facts that have come to light," IPCC Chairman Rajendra Pachauri told Reuters.
"When you're on strong scientific ground, you don't yield any ground. We have to make sure that scientific truth is not suppressed."
The Kyoto 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, which have no Kyoto goals.
(Additional reporting by Alister Doyle in Oslo; editing by Tim Pearce)
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