But that's not a worry to the organizers of this month's U.N. climate conference, who say they only want to jump-start the world's talks toward a new climate accord.

''This meeting is not about delivering a fully negotiated climate change deal, but it is to set the wheels in motion,'' the U.N. climate chief, Yvo de Boer, said Sunday.  

New York Times  12/9/2007                                                                                         (more)

Conservatives do not want to recognize the dangers that have been trumpeted across the globe.  Why?  Is it that "business as usual" would be disturbed?  Yes it would be disturbed and next quarter's P&L won't lead to a generous bonus for the CEO, but take a longer look.  The creation of new technologies and cleaner energy production will become the next big thing and with it, enormous economic benefits for many.

To read the summary report of 150 scientists* (not the Bush Administration) click here.

*Compiled by 150 scientists as main authors, another 400 scientists as contributing authors, a team of review editors, and some 600 reviewers.

Last week's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report represents "history's most definitive statement of scientific consensus on climate change." Its main findings: global warming is "unequivocal" and human activity is the main driver, "very likely" causing most of the rise in temperatures since 1950. If left unchecked, it will destroy our habitat. "It's time to end the debate and act," House Science and Technology Committee Chairman Bart Gordon (D-TN) says. "All the naysayers should step aside." This morning, Gordon chaired Congress' first hearings on the findings of the IPCC (details here). These proceedings should be the beginning of a thorough and sustained examination of the report's findings -- by Congress, the media, and ordinary citizens. The IPCC report cannot fall off the radar, because the alternative is waiting for disaster to compel us into action. "Does it take a crisis to get people to go along a new path or can they respond to a series of rational, incremental gains in knowledge?" asked Ralph J. Cicerone, the president of the National Academy of Sciences. "That's the question." If we answer that question correctly, the good news is there is still "an enormous amount the international community could do to avert climate change if swift action was taken," says Dr. Graeme Pearman, who helped draft the report. (A good first step: the aggressive Global Warming Reduction Act sponsored by Sens. Olympia Snowe (R-ME) and John Kerry (D-MA).)

THE PROCESS: Climate change skeptic Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) says the IPCC's report is "a political document, not a scientific report." In fact, the power of the IPCC findings are in their exhaustive scientific rigor. "The main science report -- more than 1,600 pages in its draft form -- was compiled by 150 scientists as main authors, another 400 scientists as contributing authors, a team of review editors, and some 600 reviewers. The document went through two rounds of reviews. And unlike past efforts, review editors required chapter authors to respond to each responsible review comment." Researchers utilize the latest technology -- scientists at the federal Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory "devoted half of their supercomputer's time for a year running models for the latest report" -- and "every government in the world" approves the summary for policymakers released last week. "Only points that were considered indisputable survived this process," one climate scientist notes. "This is a very conservative document - that's what makes it so scary." Indeed, the process is at times so ploddingly exhaustive that "many top U.S. scientists reject [the] rosier numbers" about sea level rise because the calculations "don't include the recent, and dramatic, melt-off of big ice sheets" in Greenland and Antarctica.

THE SHIFT: The findings of the new report are most dramatic when compared to language used in previous IPCC statements. The panel's first report released in 1990 found that rising temperatures were "broadly consistent with prediction of climate models, but it is also of the same magnitude as natural climate variability," meaning "the observed increase could be largely due to this natural variability." Five years later, the IPCC argued that a "balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate." In 2001 report cited "new and stronger evidence that most of the warming observed over the last 50 years is attributable to human activities." In the latest report, it states that warming is "very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic [man-made] greenhouse gas concentrations."

WORLD CHANGING: Continued global warming is predicted in the new report, leading to a "huge disruption to agriculture, more floods, heatwaves, desertification and melting glaciers." Droughts will be longer, flooding rains will be rarer but heavier. "Cyclones will hit harder. Violent storms and extreme heatwaves will strike more frequently. Evaporation will suck up scarce inland water. Sea levels will creep up half a meter. Oceans will be so acidic that in some places shells and reefs will dissolve." The increase in hurricane and tropical cyclone strength since 1970 "more likely than not" can be attributed to man-made global warming, the report finds. Australia, currently in the grip of its worst recorded drought, is warned that the Great Barrier Reef will "become 'functionally extinct' because of coral bleaching."

THE HUMAN TOLL: The impact of global warming will be catastrophic, "forcing hundreds of millions of people to flee their devastated homelands, particularly in tropical, low-lying areas, while creating waves of immigrants" -- dubbed climate refugees -- "whose movements will strain the economies of even the most affluent countries." Climate change will bring water scarcity to between 1.1 and 3.2 billion people by the end of the century; an additional 200 million to 600 million people across the world "would face food shortages in another 70 years, while coastal flooding would hit another 7 million homes." "The message is that every region of the earth will have exposure," says Pearman. As the poles warm and substantial parts of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets melt or disintegrate, "we may be essentially remaking the face of the Earth by putting a lot more water into the ocean, reconfiguring the coastal zone, drowning areas like river deltas, where tens of millions of people live in some countries, like the Netherlands, Bangladesh, the Louisiana delta in this country." Princeton climatologist Michael Oppenheimer calls it "the most pervasive and most threatening consequence of global warming. It will be very expensive. And once it gets under way, it's essentially impossible to stop." Meanwhile, the poor in developing countries "will suffer the most, even though they are the least responsible for global warming," U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon pointed out, as "the annual costs of climate change impacts in exposed developing countries could range from several percent to tens of percent of gross domestic product."

THE SPIN: A White House letter released yesterday laments that, following the release of the IPCC report, "a number of media reports perpetuated inaccuracies that the President's concern about climate change is new." Actually, the White House says, "Beginning in June 2001, President Bush has consistently acknowledged climate change is occurring and humans are contributing to the problem." But just last year, Bush claimed there is still "a debate over whether [global warming] is man-made or naturally caused." Moreover, the White House says, "climate change has been a top priority since the President’s first year in office." In fact, Bush has consistently rejected stronger measures to combat climate change, even as carbon dioxide emissions in the U.S. have increased by 354 million metric tons since 2001, including the "largest annual amount ever produced by any country on record." He has also cut NASA's earth science budget by 30 percent since taking office. Last week, Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman again rejected the idea of limiting U.S. emissions. "We are a small contributor to the overall, when you look at the rest of the world, so it’s really got to be a global solution," he said. In fact, the U.S. emits a quarter of global carbon emissions, more than any other country, despite having only 5 percent of the world's population. Furthermore, the Bush administration has rejected global solutions, from 2001's withdrawal from the Kyoto Protocol to last week's dismissal (along with China and India) of a new global body aimed at slowing warming.

In other word, the Bush Administration continues the policy of lying to the world, telling us how highly they place this problem and then taking every opportunity to dismiss it as bunk and gut measures to improve the environment.

Read the Report

• So much information including Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report and Report by the Center for Naval Analyses
• Global Warming = bigger and worse hurricanes Fox
• EPA Global Warming Site
• Al Gore and an Inconvenient Truth
• Science Ignored, Again by Bush (Editorial)
• UNITED STATES RANKED 53RD IN CLIMATE CHANGE PERFORMANCE