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The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has published a 'pocket guide' to global warming in advance of key UN climate negotiations in December, calling for swift action to avert catastrophic sea level increases and species extinction.
The role of the IPCC, composed of over 2,500 scientists from around the world, is to "assess on a comprehensive, objective, open and transparent basis the scientific, technical and socio-economic information relevant to understanding the scientific basis of risk of human-induced climate change, its potential impacts and options for adaptation and mitigation".
On 16 November, IPCC scientists concluded work on a 'synthesis report' of their Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) on climate change in Valencia, Spain. A 23-page draft 'summary for policymakers' of the synthesis report was published the same day as a reference document for global policymakers, to be used during the 3-14 December UN climate change negotiations in Bali.
The synthesis report brings together the work of the three previous AR4 reports published over the course of 2007, which deal with:
LinksDossier: Science of climate change
"Global average sea level has risen since 1961 at an average rate of 1.8 mm/yr and since 1993 at 3.1 mm/yr, with contributions from thermal expansion, melting glaciers and ice caps, and the polar ice sheets", according to the summary for policymakers, which warns that the earth's atmosphere already contains enough CO2 to raise sea levels by nearly 1.5 metres over the next millenium.
The summary also warns about a 5% drop in global GDP, a 50% reduction in African crop yields, destruction of the Amazon rainforest, widespread droughts, desertification, flooding and fierce storms.
Growth in global CO2 emissions must be curbed within seven years in order to prevent the extinction of 25% of the world's species, according to the IPCC. But some critics argue the IPCC's findings are out-of-date and too 'optimistic', and warn of impending climate-related catastrophes.
Ban Ki Moon, UN Secretary General, who conducted a global tour of climate change 'hot spots' before speaking to the IPCC, called on the US and China to "play a more constructive role" in reducing CO2 emissions.
US and Chinese leaders will meet with their European and international counterparts in Bali to begin official talks on a global regime to deal with climate change.
The EU, which has a series of climate-change policies in place since 2000 and which considers its Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS) to be a flagship initiative, is hoping the Bali talks will produce a mandate to negotiate a successor to the Kyoto Protocol, set to expire in 2013.
But the US, which never ratified the Kyoto Protocol, has consistently expressed its opposition to binding CO2 emissions cuts imposed at international level, and China has argued that its development should not be stifled and that industrialised nations bear a greater historical responsibility for global warming.
EU Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas welcomed the report as "vital reading for decision-makers" and argued that the "global community must respond to this scientific call for action by agreeing in Bali to launch negotiations on a comprehensive and ambitious new global climate agreement", he said in a press statement.
Dimas also expressed his confidence that "deep emission cuts are both technologically feasible and economically affordable".
The Greens/EFA group in the Parliament said in a press release that the report "further ups the ante on international leaders to reach an agreement on post-Kyoto international climate policy, including binding measures, to limit warming to two degrees".
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