COPENHAGEN, Denmark — The United Nations’ expert panel on climate science on Saturday finished a report on global warming that the U.N.’s environment agency said offers “conclusive evidence” that humans are altering the Earth’s climate system.
The document, which combines the findings of three earlier reports, was adopted after talks that went on until 5 a.m. Saturday by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
The scientists and government representatives on the panel, who jointly approved the document line by line, then rested for a few hours before resuming the session in Copenhagen to finish the document. The report is scheduled to be released to the public Sunday.
Apart from discussing the human influence, the report is expected to describe how climate impacts, including melting Arctic sea ice and rising levels, already are happening and could become irreversible unless the world curbs its greenhouse gas emissions.
The IPCC says scientists are 95 percent certain that the buildup of such gases from the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation is the main cause of warming seen since the middle of the 20th century.
IPCC vice chairman Jean-Pascal van Ypersele wrote on Twitter that the report was adopted Saturday afternoon after round-the-clock talks.
The U.N. Environment Program said the report “offers conclusive scientific evidence that human activities continue to cause unprecedented changes in the Earth’s climate.”
In an interview, UNEP leader Achim Steiner said the world has the technology and capacity to act and needs to do so urgently. The cost of achieving emissions cuts increases exponentially with each year “because you will have to make far more drastic changes in our economy,” Steiner said.
Related
The Obama administration on Friday published a small library’s worth of climate change documents, outlining 38 federal agencies’ vulnerabilities to global warming and how they will address them — as well as a separate and larger set of government-wide plans to cut greenhouse gas emissions and achieve new targets for sustainability.
The Department of Health and Human Services, in its report, says it views climate change as “one of the top public health challenges of our time.”
NASA, in its report, warns that climate change could interfere with its ability to get to space: “Many Agency assets … are located along America’s coasts,” where sea level rise is expected.
— The Washington Post
