UN panel gives dire warming forecast

[one...two...tree 2,762]

By ARTHUR MAX, Associated Press Writer

The Earth is hurtling toward a warmer climate at a quickening pace, a Nobel-winning U.N. scientific panel said in a landmark report released Saturday, warning of inevitable human suffering and the threat of extinction for some species.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon said climate change imperils "the most precious treasures of our planet" and called on the United States and China — the world's two biggest polluters — to do more to fight it.

As early as 2020, 75 million to 250 million people in Africa will suffer water shortages, residents of Asia's megacities will be at great risk of river and coastal flooding, Europeans can expect extensive species loss, and North Americans will experience longer and hotter heat waves and greater competition for water, the report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says.

The potential impact of global warming is "so severe and so sweeping that only urgent, global action will do," Ban told the IPCC after it issued its fourth and final report this year.

The IPCC adopted the report, along with a summary, after five days of sometimes tense negotiations. It lays out blueprints for avoiding the worst catastrophes — and various possible outcomes, depending on how quickly and decisively action is taken.

The document says recent research has heightened concern that the poor and the elderly will suffer most from climate change; that hunger and disease will be more common; that droughts, floods and heat waves will afflict the world's poorest regions; and that more animal and plant species will vanish.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071117/ap_on_...pxcFQysM4NxieAA

[peejay 327]

It doesn't sound good at all. I get the same sinking feeling when I look at the graph below too.

[Hilarious Clinton 452]

The UN can't do government now it's predicting weather. Wake me up when they do sports.

[one...two...tree 2,762]

The UN can't do government now it's predicting weather. Wake me up when they do sports.

Same thing could be said about our current Administration. It's a matter of perspective.

[Hilarious Clinton 452]

The UN can't do government now it's predicting weather. Wake me up when they do sports.

Same thing could be said about our current Administration. It's a matter of perspective.

I won't argue with that.