Global warming much worse than predicted, say scientists By Michael McCarthy, Steve Connor, Richard Lloyd Parry and Stephen Castle
Global warming is happening now, caused by human actions, and threatens the Earth with disaster, the world's leading atmospheric scientists insisted yesterday as politicians struggled to repair the Kyoto treaty on climate change which the United States torpedoed in March.
A 2,000-page UN report on the science and potential impacts of climate change gave the most authoritative statement yet that the Earth is warming rapidly, that the main cause is industrial pollution, and that the consequences for human society are likely to be catastrophic.
The report, from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), made up of several hundred of the world's most distinguished meteorologists, including many Americans, is a substantial slap in the face for US President George Bush, whose unilateral abrogation of Kyoto has thrown the international effort to counter global warming into chaos. It comes on the eve of first big meeting, held in Bonn next week, to try to repair the treaty.
The president cited doubts about the science of climate change as the reason why he would not impose on the American economy the cuts in industrial gases which Kyoto requires - and which the US signed up to at the original treaty agreement in 1997.
But yesterday the IPCC scientists gave their unqualified support to the view that global warming is real. Furthermore, they said, since their last report was published six years ago, they found they had vastly underestimated the rate at which global temperatures are rising. They now believe they will rise by as much as 5.8C by the end of this century, almost twice the increase predicted in their 1995 report.
This is likely to lead to crop failures, water shortages, increased disease and disasters for towns and cities from flooding, landslides and sea storm surges, they believe, with the poor developing countries likely to be hit hardest. The crucial point that emerges from the report is that all these new stresses may be happening at the same time to a world already under great stain from massive population growth, poverty and pollution.
As the massive three-volume study was published yesterday (by Britain's Cambridge University Press), politicians across the globe were scrambling to put some sort of deal together at next week's Bonn conference, which will be attended by ministers and officials from more than 150 nations.
It is a resumption of the meeting on the Kyoto treaty which broke up acrimoniously in The Hague last November with a spectacular walk-out by Britain's Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott. But the argument then was over a technicality in the treaty and the Americans were still on board. Subsequently, Mr Bush has repudiated the treaty's basic principle - that the industrialised countries should cut their greenhouse gas emissions - and the chances of the Americans coming back on board are regarded as minimal.
Bizarrely, the Americans will be present in Bonn as negotiators on a treaty they have said they will have nothing to do with, as they are signed-up parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.
Diplomatic efforts were continuing yesterday to build alliances which might allow Kyoto to be repaired. Mr Prescott flew into Tokyo for meetings with the Japanese prime minister, Junichiro Koizumi, and his foreign and environment ministers, in an attempt to persuade the Japanese to join the European Union's plan to ratify the treaty without the Americans. But it looks increasingly likely that the Japanese will do nothing to upset the US, their main diplomatic and trading ally.
European leaders yesterday admitted that confidence in the Kyoto process may collapse if there is no breakthrough in next week's Bonn talks. Margot Wallström, European Commissioner for the Environment, conceded that negotiations in Japan and Australia had failed to win a pledge from the two governments to ratify the treaty without the involvement of the US.
"I clearly see the risk that the public and stakeholders lose confidence in the process if we do not make any steps in Bonn," Ms Wallström said.
Olivier Deleuze, the energy minister of Belgium, which holds the EU's rotating presidency, added: "If nothing moves forward in Bonn then we will lose momentum and the process will sink."
Brussels has still not given up hope of progress and argues that Japan and Australia remain committed to the Kyoto objectives, and to the discussions in Bonn.