UN:World governments should take heed of the most wide-ranging scientific assessment so far of a human link to global warming and agree prompt action to slow the trend, the chairman of a UN climate report said yesterday.
A draft of the report, due for release next Friday, projects a big rise in temperatures this century and warns of more heatwaves, floods, droughts and rising sea levels linked to greenhouse gases released mainly by the burning of fossil fuels.
Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), said: "I hope policies and action will be formed to address the problem. I think, based on the awareness that is growing very rapidly in every part of the globe, you will see a certain political resolve developing."
Governments and scientists began a final review of the IPCC draft yesterday, which they are due to approve before its release on Friday. The report draws on research by 2,500 scientists from more than 130 countries and has taken six years to compile.
It is unlikely there will be major changes between the draft and the final conclusions, diplomatic sources say.
Thirty-five industrial nations have signed up to the UN's Kyoto Protocol, capping emissions of carbon dioxide.
The United States pulled out in 2001, arguing that Kyoto would cost jobs and that it wrongly excluded developing nations from the targets it set for 2012.
Nevertheless, President George Bush admitted last week that climate change was now a "serious challenge".
The draft report says there is at least a 90 per cent probability that human activities are to blame for most of the warming in the past 50 years. The previous report, in 2001, rated the probability at just 66 per cent.
The report is expected to forecast a temperature rise of 2 to 4.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels by 2100.