VisionsToReality said:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7098902.stm


A UN panel has agreed a landmark report on climate change, and says the world must act hastily to prevent the worst predicted effects coming to pass.

After arduous talks in Valencia, Spain, scientists agreed a document they hope will shape debate on the next phase of the fight against climate change.

It declared the fact of global warming "unequivocal", and said it may bring "abrupt and irreversible" impacts.

The text will be officially launched by UN chief Ban Ki-moon on Saturday.

Delegates to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) summarised thousands of pages of scientific analysis, bringing together elements of the three reports already released this year, on the science of climate change, impacts and adaptation, and options for mitigating the problem.

"This is the strongest report yet by the IPCC - but says that there is still time to act," Bill Hare, an Australian climate scientist and one of the authors, told Reuters.

Among the report's top-line conclusions are that climate change is "unequivocal", that humankind's emissions of greenhouse gases are more than 90% likely to be the main cause, and that impacts can be reduced at reasonable cost.

The synthesis summary finalised late on Friday strengthens the language of those earlier reports with a warning that climate change may bring "abrupt and irreversible" impacts.

Such impacts could include the fast melting of glaciers and species extinctions.

"Climate change is here, it's impacting our lives and our economies, and we need to do something about it," commented Hans Verolme, director of the climate change programme with the environmental group WWF.

"After this report, there are no politicians left who can argue they don't know what climate change is or they don't know what to do about it."

Local witnesses

At a news conference, WWF presented testimonies from "climate change witnesses" in various parts of the world.

Speaking by video link, Australian scientists and fishermen spoke of the changes they were seeing on the Great Barrier Reef. And Olav Mathis Eira, a Sami reindeer herder from Norway, said that his communities are seeing weather patterns unprecedented in their oral history.

"Winter is one-and-a-half months later than it used to be," he said. "We observed birds and insects that do not have a name in Sami."

The 20-page synthesis summary by the Nobel Prize-winning IPCC will be accompanied by a longer, more detailed document.

The findings will feed into the next round of negotiations on the UN climate convention and Kyoto Protocol, which open in Bali on 3 December.

"The report sends a very strong signal to Bali," said Mr Verolme of the WWF. "Now it's up to the politicians."

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Quote:

http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/financialpost/comment/story.html?id=597d0677-2a05-47b4-b34f-b84068db11f4&p=4
http://bbs.chinadaily.com.cn/viewthread.php?tid=571597
The scientists in at least 2 countries have looked beyond the near term and at the wide picture over centuries.

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I trust the IPCC over a random, most likely bias sampling of only a handful of countries.

You can find scientists anywhere that will say whatever you want. The only thing that matters, though, is - are they credible?
I believe yours are not. Especially since they are talking about sunspots, seeing as how the majority of the world's credible scientists agree that sunspots are not to blame.

Do you really think it's just a coincidence that around the industrial age in the 1800s that CO2 started booming, being spewed into the air by humans, and that shortly following that boom, temps rose? And that over 800,000 years of stable climate has suddenly changed because of the sun, and not CO2? And that it's a coincidence that 800,000 years of data taken from ice cores reveal that temp and CO2 are closely connected? C'mon. not only does it make sense to the average layman, but the majority of our scientists confirm that man is to blame, at least in some part.

Diploid said:

their is NO PROOF of global warming

There IS proof of global warming. I don't know any climate scientist who disputes this.

What is in dispute is the cause. This is why:

1. The Earth has been much warmer than it is now many times in the past.

2. The Earth's atmosphere has contained much higher concentrations of CO2 many times in the past.

So, while there's little doubt that the Earth is warming, there is a lot of doubt about the cause. It may well be that the Earth does this all by itself from time to time and we're just along for the ride, or minimally contributing.

Be critical of the media. They make money by riling people up, and this global warming hysteria is selling a lot of newspapers.

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hummermania00 said:

The UN is full of shit

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