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Climate change 'to hit poor hard'
The poorest people in the world will be hardest hit by the effects of climate change, experts at a major conference on global warming have said.
The warning came ahead of the publication of a key report on climate change by hundreds of environmental experts from around the world.
Agreement on the report was reached after days of debate in Brussels.
The report concludes climate change is already having major impacts on the natural world.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) believes there is also a discernible, though less marked, impact on human societies.
Objections
Outlining the report's findings, Dr Martin Parry, co-chairman of IPCC Working Group II, said evidence showed climate change was having a direct effect on animals, plants and water.
"For the first time, we are no longer arm-waving with models; this is empirical data, we can actually measure it," he told a news conference.
Dr Parry outlined the four areas of the world now thought to be the most vulnerable to climate change.
More
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6532323.stm
Agreement on the report was reached after days of debate in Brussels.
The report concludes climate change is already having major impacts on the natural world.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) believes there is also a discernible, though less marked, impact on human societies.
Objections
Outlining the report's findings, Dr Martin Parry, co-chairman of IPCC Working Group II, said evidence showed climate change was having a direct effect on animals, plants and water.
"For the first time, we are no longer arm-waving with models; this is empirical data, we can actually measure it," he told a news conference.
Dr Parry outlined the four areas of the world now thought to be the most vulnerable to climate change.
More
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6532323.stm
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A warming world will place hundreds of millions of extra people at greater risk of food and water shortages and threaten the survival of thousands of species of plants and animals, the scientists said.
Floods, heat waves, famines, storms and droughts are all expected to increase, with people in poorer countries suffering the worst effects.
Neil Adger, a scientist at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of East Anglia, who helped to write the new report, said: "There are no winners from the impacts of climate change. No country is immune."
The report was issued in Brussels by the UN's intergovernmental panel on climate change. Its release was delayed by arguments between the scientists, who wrote a draft based on published evidence, and some government representatives present, who must agree the final text and insisted some of its conclusions were watered down.
"The authors lost," one scientist in the negotiations told the Associated Press. "A lot of authors are not going to engage in the IPCC process any more. I have had it with them."
The report says natural systems on all continents and in some oceans are being affected by rising temperatures. It says warming caused by human activity is likely to have had "a discernible impact on the global level on many physical and biological systems".
More
http://environment.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,,2051770,00.html
Last-minute negotiations over language continued behind closed doors Friday, less than one hour before a scheduled release of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report in Brussels.
A dispute between the scientific authors and the diplomatic editors of the report erupted over the sixth paragraph in the 21-page summary that sets out how much confidence the scientists have in their findings about the effects global warming is already having.
The sentence originally said scientists had "very high confidence" - which means more than 90% chance of accuracy - in the statement that many natural systems around the globe "are being affected by regional climate changes, particularly temperature increases."
After days of intensive negotiations over this section, delegates from China and Saudi Arabia on Friday insisted that the confidence level be reduced to "high" - which means more than 80% accuracy.
Three top scientific authors formally objected to the change by the diplomats, saying it was an unprecedented weakening of the scientific confidence that the issue wasn't raised when the report was circulated months ago.
More
http://www.smartmoney.com/bn/ON/index.cfm?story=ON-20070406-000403-0342