Global warming man-made - UN climate panel

The UN climate panel issued its strongest warning yet yesterday that human activities are heating the planet, adding pressure on governments to do more to combat accelerating global warming. Reuters' correspondents Gerard Wynn and Alister Doyle report.

The IPCC, the most authoritative group on warming, grouping 2,500 scientists from more than 130 nations, predicted more severe rains, melting glaciers, droughts, heatwaves and rising sea levels, especially if Antarctica or Greenland thaw.

The final text said it was "very likely" - or a probability of more than 90 per cent - that human activities led by burning fossil fuels explained most of the warming in the past 50 years.

That is a toughening from the last report, in 2001, when the IPCC said the link was "likely", or 66 per cent probable. Signs of change range from drought in Australia to record high January temperatures in Europe.

"February 2, 2007 may be remembered as the day the question mark was removed from whether (people) are to blame for climate change," Achim Steiner, the head of the UN Environment Programme, told a news conference.

He urged governments to inject more momentum into stalled talks on long-term cuts in emissions. Greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere have not been higher in 650,000 years.

"We are in a sense doing things that have not happened in 650,000 years, based on the scientific evidence," Rajendra Pachauri, the head of the IPCC, told a news conference.

A 21-page summary of scientific findings for policy makers outlines wrenching change such as a possible melting of Arctic sea ice in summers by 2100 and says it is "more likely than not" that greenhouse gases have made tropical cyclones more intense.

The report predicts a "best estimate" that temperatures would rise by between 1.8°C and 4°C in the 21st century, within a likely range from 1.1°C to 6.4°C.

Temperatures rose 0.7°C in the 20th century and the 10 hottest years since records began in the 1850s have been since 1994. UN officials hope the report will prompt governments - led by the United States, the top emitter - and companies to do more to cut greenhouse gases, released mainly by burning fossil fuels in power plants, factories and cars.

Many backers of the UN's Kyoto Protocol, a plan binding 35 industrial nations to cut emissions of greenhouse gases by 2012, want outsiders to get more involved. The United States and China are not bound by Kyoto targets.

The head of the US delegation said that President George W. Bush's policies, braking the rise of emissions rather than cutting them, were working.

"The President has put in place a comprehensive set of policies to address what he has called the 'serious challenge' of climate change," Sharon Hays, associate director of the White House Office of Science & Technology Policy, told Reuters.

Mr Bush pulled out of Kyoto in 2001, saying caps would harm the economy and that Kyoto unfairly omitted developing nations from a first period to 2012. He focuses instead on big investments in technologies such as hydrogen and biofuels.

The President of Kiribati, a group of 33 Pacific coral atolls threatened by rising seas, said time was running out.

"The question is, what can we do now? There's very little we can do about arresting the process," President Anote Tong said.

The report projects a rise in sea levels of between 18 and 59 centimetres in the 21st century - and said that bigger gains could not be ruled out if ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland thaw.

Some leading scientists had criticised an earlier draft for cutting the range after the 2001 forecast a rise between nine and 88 centimetres by 2100. Rising seas threaten countries such as Kiribati and cities from Shanghai to Buenos Aires.

Instant view

The UN climate panel issued its strongest warning yet yesterday that human activities are heating the planet and could lead to more droughts, stronger storms and rising seas by 2100.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said it was "very likely" that human activities were the main cause of warming in the past 50 years, or a 90 per cent probability.

That was up from a "likely" link seen in a last report in 2001, or a 66 per cent probability.

Following are reactions to the report:

British Environment Minister David Miliband: "It is another nail in the coffin of the climate change deniers and represents the most authoritative picture to date, showing that the debate over the science of climate change is well and truly over. What's now urgently needed is the international political commitment to take action to avoid dangerous climate change.

"This has been absent so far. If we are to succeed, we will require the engagement not just of environmental ministers but heads of state, Prime Ministers and Finance Ministers."

Georgiy Golitsyn, chair of the Climate Council at the Russian Academy of Sciences: "The main thing is that it (the report) repeats and reiterates the influence of human activity on climate change, which is already happening. This Russian winter hasn't been a winter at all because of climate change."

Indonesian Environment Minister Rahmat Witoelar: "We should decrease CO2 emissions drastically by reducing pollution in cities and enforcing environment-friendly biofuel.

"Aging buses should not run. Factories should follow emission policies. We will sue those who violate the policies. It can take some time since there are a lot of factories. The penalty is the closure of factories.

"Rainforest should never be cut down at all. A major plantation that wishes to clear up a hectare of fields should plant two hectares within two years. This effort will eventually bring back our forests."

Ainun Nishat, country representative of International Union for Conservation of Nature in Bangladesh (IUCN):

"Bangladesh will be one of the countries that would be the most seriously affected by global warming and sea rise.

"The impacts on Bangladesh would include increased level of drought, flooding and storms, especially in coastal belts, salinity and loss of land," he said.

"Millions of Bangladeshis will lose their land and homes, adding to the south Asian's country's plight of poverty and over-crowding.

Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, director of the Potsdam Institute For Climate Impact Research, Germany: "With this report, any last doubts should be dispelled that humans are 'over-turning the climate screw'. Hence, we have a responsibility to correct this dangerous development by drastically reducing greenhouse gas emissions."