Latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Stories

BONN, Germany -- Developing countries called for more money and expertise to help them fight the potentially catastrophic effects of global warming, as more than 1,000 diplomats began work Monday on a new accord to control greenhouse gases.The 166 countries and organizations at a two-week meeting of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change in Bonn are to negotiate key elements of a treaty to succeed the 10-year-old Kyoto Protocol, which set binding targets on industrial countries to...

BOULDER, Colo. -- Arctic sea ice is melting three times faster than many scientists project, U.S. researchers reported Monday, just days ahead of the next major international report on climate change.Scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research and the University of Colorado in Boulder concluded, using actual measurements, that Arctic sea ice has declined at an average rate of about 7.8 percent per decade between 1953 and 2006.By contrast, 18 computer models used by the...

BANGKOK, Thailand -- After two reports predicting a warmer Earth where life is fundamentally changed, a U.N.-sponsored scientific panel next month will issue a third study describing how a united world can avert the worst, by embracing technologies ranging from nuclear power to manure controls.Under a best-case scenario for heading off severe damage, the global economy might lose as little as 3 percentage points of growth by 2030 in deploying technologies to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions,...

UNITED NATIONS -- Chicago and Los Angeles will likely to face increasing heat waves. Severe storm surges could hit New York and Boston. And cities that rely on melting snow for water may run into serious shortages.These are some of the findings about North America in a report by hundreds of scientists that try to explain how global warming is changing life on Earth. The scientists with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a summary of their findings on global warming last...

BRUSSELS -- Two distinctly different groups, data-driven scientists and nuanced offend-no-one diplomats, collided and then converged this past week. At stake: a report on the future of the planet and the changes it faces with global warming.An inside look at the last few hours of tense negotiations at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reveals how the diplomats won at the end thanks to persistence and deadlines. But scientists quietly note that they have the last say.Diplomats from...

BRUSSELS, Belgium -- The EU's chief environmental official urged the United States and Australia to do more to cut greenhouse gases, saying Monday their cooperation was critical in the fight against global warming.At the start of a five-day U.N. climate change conference, EU Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas criticized the two major holdouts to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol for their reluctance to join the 27-nation EU and other rich countries in fighting climate change.Dimas said the U.S....

WASHINGTON -- Some climates may disappear from Earth entirely, not just from their current locations, while new climates could develop if the planet continues to warm, a study says. Such changes would endanger some plants and animals while providing new opportunities for others, said John W. Williams, an assistant professor of geography at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.Using global change forecasts prepared for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, researchers led by Williams...

WASHINGTON -- By 2020, the United States will emit almost one-fifth more gases that lead to global warming than it did in 2000, increasing the risks of drought and scarce water supplies.That projection comes from an internal draft report from the Bush administration that is more than a year overdue at the United Nations. The Associated Press obtained a copy Saturday.The United States already is responsible for roughly one-quarter of the world's carbon dioxide and other "greenhouse"...

UNITED NATIONS -- To head off the worst of climate change, governments must pour tens of billions of dollars more than they are into clean-energy research and enforce sharp rollbacks in fossil-fuel emissions, an expert scientific panel reported to the United Nations on Tuesday.The U.N. itself must better prepare to help tens of millions of "environmental refugees," the group said, and authorities everywhere should discourage new building on land less than one meter - 39 inches -...

SAN FRANCISCO -- A top scientist in the study of climate change says she is optimistic about public understanding of the dangers of global warming."I'm incredibly encouraged," Susan Solomon beamed after speaking to the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.Solomon, a scientist at the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, was instrumental in developing the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report released earlier this month...