Rising sea levels and mass extinction of species under discussion for climate change report

The Associated Press

Published: November 12, 2007

VALENCIA, Spain: A U.N. panel is examining the threat of irreversible rising sea levels and the mass extinction of species caused by climate change, as delegates draft a document laying the scientific groundwork for talks on a new regime to control carbon emissions, participants said Tuesday.

The meeting of the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change opened Monday with a warning from the top U.N. climate change official, Yvo de Boer, that the lives of the world's poorest people were at stake and that failure to curb greenhouse gas emissions would be "criminally irresponsible."

In closed-door sessions, delegates from more than 140 countries and scientific experts made slow progress in a line-by-line reading of a draft summary of the scientific understanding of climate change, and what can be done to slow the gradual warming of the Earth, delegates said.

The document is important because it is approved by consensus, meaning that all participating governments subscribe to its findings.

One section inconclusively negotiated Monday tries to identify five of the most serious concerns, participants said on condition of anonymity since the discussions were confidential.

They include extreme weather events, sea level rises and the threat to biodiversity in vulnerable areas, according to early drafts obtained by The Associated Press. Temperature increases of 1.5 to 2.5 degrees Centigrade (2.7-4.5 Fahrenheit) above the average of the last two decades of the 20th century would risk the widespread extinction of animals and plants, it said.

Technologies already exist, or will soon be commercially available, to halt the rise in global temperatures, the draft says. But that will require investment in methods to reduce carbon emissions, and the longer it takes to stabilize the rise the more it will cost, says the preliminary draft.

The report, the fourth to be issued this year, is a composite of the earlier reports, but integrates the evidence of climate change with potential impacts more closely than before, the participants said.

Called the "synthesis report," it is due to be released Saturday, summarizing the work of 2,500 contributing researchers and hundreds of authors who reviewed and organized the data since the last assessment was published six years ago.

The presence of U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon at the unveiling is meant to underscore the need for decisive action.

It will be the first point of reference for delegates to a major conference next month in Bali, Indonesia, that will discuss the next stage in the global effort to combat climate change.

The current regime laid out in the 1997 Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012. That agreement set mandatory targets for 36 industrial countries to reduce emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases by an average 5 percent below 1990 levels, and created markets for industries and countries to profit from successfully controlling their emissions.

The Bali conference will try to draw in the United States, which rejected the Kyoto accord, and countries like China and India, which say they cannot accept regulations that could limit their prospects to develop their economies and lift their populations from poverty.

IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri, calling the Valencia meeting a watershed for the group, said the scientists were determined to "adhere to standards of quality" in its last report to be issued this year.

The comment was an indirect barb at the political delegations, which environmentalists have accused of watering down and excluding vital information from the summaries of earlier reports to fit their own domestic agendas.
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