UN Says Global Warming Coming to a Head by 2100
A U.N. climate panel will project wrenching disruptions to nature by 2100 in a report next week blaming human use of fossil fuels more clearly than ever for global warming, scientific sources said.
A draft report based on work by 2,500 scientists and due for release on February 2 in Paris, draws on research showing greenhouse gases at their highest levels for 650,000 years, fuelling a warming likely to bring more droughts, floods and rising seas.
The report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) may have some good news, however, by toning down chances of the biggest temperature and sea level rises projected in the IPCC’s previous 2001 study, the sources said.
But it will also revise up its lowest projections.
“The main good news is that we have a clearer idea of what we are up against,” one source said. The report will set the tone for work in extending the U.N.’s Kyoto Protocol, the main international plan for curbing global warming, beyond 2012.
The IPCC will say it is at least 90 percent sure that human activities, led by burning fossil fuels, are to blame for a warming over the past 50 years.
The draft conclusion that the link is “very likely” would mark a strengthening from “likely” in the 2001 report — a probability of 66-90 percent.