Final And Most Dire UN Agency Report On Climate Change Released

"The panel's fourth and final report summarized and integrated the most significant findings of three sections of a climate-science review that were released between January and April. Because the data had not previously been reviewed as a whole, scientists said the synthesized report was more explicit, creating new emphasis and alarm.

The first section of the review had covered climate trends; the second, the world's ability to adapt to a warming planet; the third, strategies for reducing carbon emissions. With their mission concluded, the hundreds of IPCC scientists spoke more freely than they had previously."

"The sense of urgency when you put these pieces together is new and striking," said Martin Parry, a British climate expert who was co-chairman of the delegation that wrote the second report. "I've come out of this process more pessimistic about the possibilities than I thought I would."

"Saturday's synthesis report was reviewed and approved by delegates from 130 nations gathered here this week. But unlike the earlier reviews, in which governments had insisted on changes that diluted the reports' impact, this time scientists and environmental groups said there had been no major dilution of the data.

For example, this report's summary was the first to acknowledge that the melting of the Greenland ice sheet from rising temperatures could result in a substantive sea-level rise over centuries rather than millennia."

"Meanwhile, the Bush administration's reaction to the report was muted...James L. Connaughton, the chairman of the president's Council on Environmental Quality, declined to say how much warming the administration considered acceptable, saying, "We don't have a view on that."

Thanks to Stephen Crowley