U.N. panel to step up warnings on climate - Yahoo! News

OSLO (Reuters) - A U.N. climate panel is set to give its strongest warning yet that human use of fossil fuels is stoking global warming, informed sources said on Friday.
A draft of the report by 2,500 scientists says it is "very likely" that human activities are the main cause of warming in the past 50 years, strengthening a conclusion in their last study in 2001 that the human link was "likely."
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) will also project less extreme bands than it did in 2001 for temperature and sea level rises in the 21st century.
It will cut out the most catastrophic and least damaging scenarios, but the smaller range it predicts would still mean huge disruption to agriculture, more floods, heatwaves, desertification and melting glaciers.
The report is due to be unveiled on February 2 in Paris, after final review and approval by governments, who will then have little room to dispute its findings. U.S. officials say Washington has funded about half the IPCC science and so the IPCC conclusions are already built into U.S. policy.
The report's stronger conclusion that humans are warming the planet could spur tougher action by governments working out how to extend the U.N.'s Kyoto Protocol on climate change beyond 2012.
"It is very likely that ... greenhouse gas increases (from human activities) caused most of the globally average temperature increases since the mid-20th century," one source who had seen the draft quoted it as saying.
The 2001 report defined "very likely" as a 90-99 percent probability and "likely" as a 66-90 percent chance.
The report means narrower ground for skeptics to argue that natural variations, such as in the sun's output, are to blame rather than emissions from burning oil, coal and gas.
The draft projects that world temperatures are likely to rise by 2.0-4.5 Celsius (3.6-8.1 Fahrenheit) by 2100 unless the world manages drastic cuts in greenhouse gas emissions from factories, cars and power plants.
DANGER AHEAD
The
European Union' name=c1> SEARCHNews News Photos Images Web' name=c3> European Union has said that even a 2 Celsius rise would tip the world into "dangerous" climate change.
The 2001 report had projected a wider possible range, of between 1.4-5.8 C (2.5-10.4 F).
The sources said the IPCC would also narrow both ends of the band of projected sea level rises, projected in the 2001 report at between 9 and 88 centimeters (3.5-34.7 inches) by 2100. Details of the new figures were not available.
"There's good news that the top extremes for temperature and sea level rises have been cut," one source said. "But anyone hoping that the rise will be at the bottom end of the range will be disappointed."
"This is still a draft and it's a draft until it's been approved by governments," another scientific source said.
The Kyoto treaty binds 35 industrial nations to cut emissions of greenhouse gases by 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2008-12 but has been weakened by a pullout by the United States, which accounts for almost a quarter of global emissions.
President George W. Bush' name=c1> SEARCHNews News Photos Images Web' name=c3> President George W. Bush pulled out in 2001, saying caps would damage the U.S. economy and that Kyoto wrongly omitted targets for poor nations -- led by China and India.
But he has said Washington will take stronger action to cap emissions "as the science justifies."