IPCC's Pachauri - Latest Update, Due In February, Wil Likely Have Big Impact

[hatrack]

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The upcoming, multi-volume U.N. assessment — on melting ice caps and rising seas, with authoritative new data on how the world has warmed — "might provide just the right impetus to get the negotiations going in a more purposeful way," Rajendra K. Pachauri said in an interview midway through the annual two-week U.N. climate conference.

The Indian climatologist is chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a global network of some 2,000 climate and other scientists that regularly assesses the state of research into how carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases produced by industry and other human activities are affecting the climate. In its pivotal Third Assessment, in 2001, the panel concluded that most global warming — temperatures rose an average 0.6 degrees Celsius (1 degree Fahrenheit) in the past century — was likely the result of such manmade greenhouse gases.

In its Fourth Assessment, to be issued in installments beginning next February, "there's much stronger evidence now of human actions on the change in climate that's taken place," Pachauri told The Associated Press. The 1997 Kyoto Protocol requires 35 industrialized nations to reduce their greenhouse emissions by 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2012. The United States and Australia are the only major industrial nations to reject Kyoto. U.S. President George W. Bush contends the emissions cuts would harm the U.S. economy.

Here at the Nairobi conference, Kyoto parties are discussing what kind of timetables and quotas should follow that pact's expiration in 2012. They also are weighing ways to draw the United States, the world's biggest carbon dioxide emitter, into a mandatory system of emissions caps. Many look toward the scientists' upcoming assessment for support. "It's bound to have a major impact," Pachauri said.

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http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2006/11/13/africa/AF_GEN_Kenya_Climate_Scientist.php

[YankeyMCC]

1. As happy as I am about the

dem wins on tuesday it has been disheartening that in all the headlines about the priorities on the new dem leadership agenda there's been nothing about the climate crisis.

Maybe the timing of this report update will provide a good kick in the but for the new congress.