"http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20010405/sc/environment_scientists_dc_1.html"
By William Maclean
NAIROBI (Reuters) - The top U.N. climate scientist said on Thursday almost all experts believed human activity was warming the planet and U.S. failure to support a global warming pact would slow the fight to curb emissions of harmful gases.
Robert Watson, head of a U.N.-sponsored panel of scientists advising governments on climate change, added that poor nations were the most vulnerable to global warming and the faster the warming the worse the environmental consequences would be.
Watson, described by many diplomats as the world's most authoritative voice on global warming, dismissed suggestions that there was a 50-50 split in the scientific community over climate change or humanity's role in producing it.
``It's not even 80-20 or 90-10 (in percentage terms). I personally believe it's something like 98-2 or 99-1,'' said Watson, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
``There's disagreement over specific areas...but on a broad level it's well over 90 percent,'' he said at a news conference following a meeting of IPCC experts in Kenya.
Climate change skeptics hailed a statement by President Bush last month that rejected the 1997 Kyoto agreement and declared the science of global warming to be uncertain.
The Kyoto treaty aims to reduce major industrialized nations' carbon dioxide emissions by an average 5.2 percent below 1990 levels by 2012 to avoid disastrous global weather changes.
Bush's announcement prompted a storm of protest from Europe to the Pacific. Industrialized and developing countries alike attacked what they saw as the lack of commitment by the world's largest polluter to the planet's environmental health. [snip]
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"http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20010405/sc/environment_scientists_dc_1.html"
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