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http://www.hamiltonspectator.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=hamilton/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1175920447278&call_pageid=1020420665036&col=1112101662670>> A new United Nations global warming report paints a near-apocalyptic vision of Earth's future: more than 1 billion people in desperate need of water, extreme food shortages in Africa, a blighted landscape ravaged by fires and floods and millions of species sentenced to extinction.
And that's the conclusion of what many scientists consider to be a watered-down summary of the report issued yesterday after a night of wrangling among bureaucrats challenging the confidence level of the experts' predictions and their timelines for future catastrophes.
That debate reflects the uncertainties that come into play when scientists try to predict the wheres and whens of climate change and how it will affect localized regions -- as well as the ability of humans to adapt to those changes.
The report is the second issued this year by UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which marshalled more than 2,500 scientists to give their best predictions of the consequences of a few degrees increase in temperature.
The first report, released in January, characterized global warming as a runaway train that is irreversible, but can be moderated by societal changes.
That report said with more than 90 per cent confidence, that the warming is caused by humans and its conclusions were accepted because of the years of accumulated scientific data supporting it.
The new report, issued in Brussels, says warming will produce devastating effects in all regions of the world and all levels of society, and people without the resources to adapt to the coming changes will suffer the greatest impact, the report said.>> "It's the poorest of the poor in the world, and this includes poor people even in prosperous societies, who are going to be the worst hit," said Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the IPCC.
In the end, the report survived relatively unscathed, but timelines for future events were largely deleted and the degree of confidence in the projections was scaled back compared with earlier drafts.>>
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