"Hours Spent Over Single Phrase Or Word" - US Trying To Eliminate Sections Of IPCC Report

[hatrack]

Delegates at a U.N. climate change conference struggled to hammer out the text of a scientific report that will guide governments for years to come on their global warming policies. With just one day left in their timetable to complete the report, key differences were being sent to ad hoc committees and delegates were working late into Thursday night to finalize a draft. Some delegates at the meeting of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, called the talks agonizingly slow, with hours spent over a single word or phrase. The meeting brings together delegations more than 140 countries, along with the panel of scientists who worked for more than two years to compile the draft.

The report by the Nobel Prize-winning IPCC summarizes the scientific consensus on the causes and effects of climate change and possible measures to slow the Earth's temperature increase. A Summary for Policymakers, about 20 pages long, draws on thousands of pages of scientific evidence and computer models. The document requires approval by consensus, which obliges all participating governments to subscribe to its findings.

Several committees were working Thursday on a section meant to highlight advances in climate research since the last report in 2001 that cause particular concern, said participants in the meeting. They spoke on condition of anonymity after the conference secretariat warned all delegates against speaking to the media. According to a draft of the document, the section pinpoints five problems that are more stark than before: the risk to unique ecosystems, the risks of extreme weather events, greater identification of locations at high risk, greater certainty that global warming will have more negative impacts than benefits, and the risk of abrupt and irreversible changes such as the extinction of species.

The participants said the U.S. delegation sought to tone down the language or eliminate the section altogether, arguing that the points appeared elsewhere in the document.

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http://www.ecoearth.info/shared/reader/welcome.aspx?linkid=87941

Not to worry! No rush! Take your time!