Friday, July 13, 2007

Climate change | All washed up


As the evidence proliferates, so do the nasty consequences

We were right, all along. That is the thrust of the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a United Nations body set up to pronounce authoritatively on the science of global warming. In 2001 it predicted that global warming would lead to many ills, including greater numbers of extinctions, growing shortages of water, higher incidence of tropical diseases, and lower yields from agriculture, fishing and forestry in some places. Now the scientists who write the reports say they have much stronger evidence that such calamities are indeed occurring—faster, in many cases, than they originally thought.

The previous IPCC report, in February, examined the evidence that the globe was actually warming. It called the trend “unequivocal”, and expressed “very high confidence” that it was largely man-made. The new report assesses the likely impact of global warming. It was released on April 6th, after a week of negotiations between scientists and governments over the wording. Representatives of China, Russia, Saudi Arabia and America in partiuclar were said to have tried to water down the report, prompting a last-ditch all-night haggle.

See full Article.