Experts wrangle over wording in U.N. climate report
05 Apr 2007 20:23:49 GMT Source: Reuters
(updates with quotes from delegate, report author) By Jeff Mason BRUSSELS, April 5 (Reuters) - Climate experts sparred on Thursday over the wording of a U.N. report spelling out the grim impact of global warming, struggling late into the night to find consensus ahead of Friday's deadline. Delegates from more than 100 countries have been in Brussels since Monday to discuss the report, which describes how climate change is already affecting the planet, but were still debating roughly 12 hours before its scheduled release. "There's agreement on the issues but there's not agreement on how to frame them," Wolfgang Cramer, a delegate from Germany, told Reuters during a break from discussions. "Some countries tend to want to see weaker statements, and some tend to want to see stronger ones, and that's basically what the struggle's about." The report predicts rising temperatures will lead to more hunger in Africa, the melting of Himalayan glaciers, more heatwaves in the United States and damage to Australia's Great Barrier Reef. It is the most authoritative study since 2001 on the regional impact of climate change. "There's a lot of debate about the degree of confidence in this conclusion or that conclusion," said Gary Yohe, one of the report's lead authors, saying talks would likely go late. He said the United States and Australia, which the European Union has accused of hampering international talks to extend the Kyoto Protocol on reducing greenhouse gas emissions, had been careful but not disruptive during the debate. "They're not questioning the science, they just want to make sure that every statement in the summary for policy makers has a source," he said of the U.S. delegation. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) draws on work by 2,500 scientists. A previous report released in Paris in February concluded it was more than 90 percent likely that recent warming had a predominantly human cause. KEY FOR POLICY MAKERS The fact that world leaders would read the report's summary had added pressure for consensus on the wording, said Hans Verolme, director of the global climate change programme at WWF, an environmental group that is an observer to the meeting. "There is discussion whether something is 'likely' or 'very likely', and my sense is that is because people are aware here that heads of state are paying attention," he told reporters. The IPCC has only once broken up without a deal, at talks in Geneva in 1995. It met successfully in Montreal a few weeks later. "It's not the end of the world if you have to give it a pause," said James Bruce, a Canadian who chaired those talks. Environmental groups said this week governments must act to reduce greenhouse gas emissions or risk exacerbating poverty in developing countries and destroying natural wonders worldwide. The report says rising temperatures will have costs for society even though some countries, such as Canada and Russia in the north, might benefit for a while from higher farm yields. A draft copy says "roughly 20-30 percent of species are likely to be at risk of irreversible extinction" if the global average temperature rises by 1.5-2.5 degrees Celsius. The report emphasises the link between human activities and climate change and says seas could keep rising for centuries. "At the global scale, the anthropogenic (human) component of warming over the last three decades has had a discernible influence on many physical and biological systems," it says. (Additional reporting by Alister Dolye in Oslo)
