Alarming UN report on climate change is too rosy, many say

Alarming UN report on climate change is too rosy, many say | By Elisabeth Rosenthal and James Kanter | Published: November 18, 2007

VALENCIA, Spain: The blunt and alarming final report of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, released here by UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon, may well underplay the problem of climate change, many experts and even the report's authors admit.

The report describes the evidence for human-induced climate change as "unequivocal." The rise in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere thus far will result in an average rise in sea levels of up to 4.6 feet, or 1.4 meters, it concluded.

"Slowing - and reversing - these threats is the defining challenge of our age," Ban said upon the report's release Saturday.

Ban said he had just completed a whirlwind tour of some climate change hot spots, which he called as "frightening as a science-fiction movie."

He described ice sheets breaking up in Antarctica, the destruction of the Amazon rainforest in Brazil, and children in Chile having to wear protective clothing because an ozone hole was letting in so much ultraviolet radiation. ...