Landmark climate report: Clock is ticking

Regional variations
Elsewhere, the projected effects of global warming would vary on different parts of the globe.

Temperatures would spike higher near the poles, according to the report. Within 22 years — whether greenhouse gases are controlled or not — most of the Northern Hemisphere will see more high temperature extremes, the report showed. Places like Northern Africa will get even less rainfall.

People experience the harshest effects of global warming through extreme weather — heat waves, droughts, floods, and hurricanes — said study co-author Philip Jones of Britain’s University of East Anglia. Those have increased significantly in the past decade and will get even worse in the future, he said.

Given all the dire predictions, why are scientists nearly all optimistic? They think their message is finally getting through to the people in charge.

Climate summit?
United Nations environmental leaders are talking about a global summit on climate change for world leaders and they hope President Bush will attend.

“The signal that we received from the science is crystal clear,” said Yvo de Boer, the executive secretary of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, a multinational body that tries to change policy to fight global warming.

“That makes it imperative that the political response that comes from this crystal-clear science is as crystal-clear as well.

“I sense a growing sense of urgency to come to grips with the issue,” de Boer said. “I think the major challenge is to further the negotiating agenda in a way that makes major players feel safe to step forwardly on this issue.”

Slide show   Above the ice View images of Greenland, where warming and shrinking glaciers are worrying scientists.

The major player that has at times been absent is the United States, the biggest emitter of greenhouse gases.

“The world cannot solve the climate change problem without the United States,” Achim Steiner, who heads the U.N. Environment Program, told The Associated Press.

“The world is looking to the Bush administration and to the United States and how it has to be a key part” of solving global warming, he said.

De Boer was optimistic, there too. In an interview, he said that despite U.S. greenhouse gas emissions increasing 16 percent since 1990, change is afoot.

Citing congressional interest and carbon dioxide emission limits requested by top industry CEOs, de Boer said: “I see a very important momentum building throughout the country.”

“It is critical that we look at this report ... as a moment where the focus of attention will shift from whether climate change is linked to human activity, whether the science is sufficient, to what on earth are we going to do about it,” said Steiner.

“The public should not sit back and say ‘There’s nothing we can do’,” he added. “Anyone who would continue to risk inaction on the basis of the evidence presented here will one day in the history books be considered irresponsible.”

IPCC background

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The report represents the most authoritative science on global warming as the panel comprises hundreds of scientists and representatives. It only addresses how and why the planet is warming, not what to do about it. Another report by the panel later this year will address the most effective measures for slowing global warming.

The IPCC, created by the United Nations in 1988, releases its assessments every five or six years — although scientists have been observing aspects of climate change since as far back as the 1960s. The reports are released in phases — this is the first of four this year.

In reviewing scientific studies from recent years, the experts added that recent warming would likely have been greater except that emissions of pollution particles and other aerosols offset some of the impact, mainly by reflecting sunlight back out to space.

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