Agreement reached on UN climate report: official
BRUSSELS - Agreement was reached here Friday on a key UN report on the impacts of global warming, the chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Rajendra Pachauri, told reporters.
"We have just completed a marathon meeting. It was a productive but tiring exercise," Pachauri said, adding however, "In the end we have what I think is a very good document."Publication of the report had been delayed after the US, China and Saudi Arabia had objected to tough-worded text, delegates said. The amended and agreed text would be submitted to a full session of the IPCC later Friday for its approval, a delegate said. The report is part of the IPCC's first review in six years of the evidence for man-made climate change. The dispute centred on a "summary for policymakers" that accompanies a 1,400-page report. The document paints a grim panorama of current and future damage to Earth's weather systems from fossil-fuel pollution and other greenhouse gases. Global warming will change rainfall patterns, punch up the power of storms, boost the risk of drought, flooding and water stress and accelerate the existing meltdown of glaciers and erosion of ice sheets, according to the main report. The impacts for human settlement and wildlife are almost universally bad and, in some computer models, catastrophic if carbon emissions continue to grow unabated. Agence France-Presse
|
