Climate Change Warning Issued

A United Nations panel warns of human suffering and species extinction.

VALENCIA, Spain — The Earth is hurtling toward a warmer climate at a quickening pace, a Nobel-winning U.N. scientific panel said in a landmark report released Saturday, warning of inevitable human suffering and the threat of extinction for some species.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon said climate change imperils “the most precious treasures of our planet” and called on the United States and China – the world’s two biggest polluters – to do more to fight it.
As early as 2020, 75 million to 250 million people in Africa will suffer water shortages, residents of Asia’s megacities will be at great risk of river and coastal flooding, Europeans can expect extensive species loss, and North Americans will experience longer and hotter heat waves and greater competition for water, the report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says.
The potential impact of global warming is “so severe and so sweeping that only urgent, global action will do,” Ban told the IPCC after it issued its fourth and final report this year.
The IPCC adopted the report, along with a summary, after five days of sometimes tense negotiations. It lays out blueprints for avoiding the worst catastrophes – and various possible outcomes, depending on how quickly and decisively action is taken.
The Summary for Policymakers, and the longer version, called the synthesis report, distill thousands of pages of data and computer models from six years of research compiled by the IPCC.
The information is expected to guide policy makers meeting in Bali, Indonesia, next month to discuss an agreement to succeed the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012.