Friday, April 06, 2007

UN experts near agreement on bleak climate warning


energy


BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Climate experts were trying to agree on Friday on the bleakest U.N. warning yet about the impacts of global warming, foreseeing hunger and water shortages in Africa and Asia, extinctions of species and rising oceans.

Delegates from more than 100 nations in the U.N. climate panel were locked in overnight talks in Brussels, seeking to overcome differences about a 21-page summary for policymakers to allow planned publication at 0800 GMT.

The talks, which began on Monday, are to review and approve a report warning that climate change could lead to lower crop yields in Africa, a thaw of Himalayan glaciers and a rise in ocean levels that could last for centuries.

It will say climate change, blamed mainly on human emissions of greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels, is no longer a vague, distant threat for the planet.

"The whole of climate change is something actually here and now rather than something for the future," Neil Adger, a British lead author of the report, said in a break from the late-night talks.

He said the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) would make "a much stronger statement" about the regional impacts of climate change than in its previous report in 2001.

U.N. officials, who had hoped for the talks to be completed on Thursday, predicted that they might end around 2 a.m. (0000 GMT) on Friday. Continued...

No comments: