Climate experts agreed a UN blueprint on Friday for fighting global warming that warns that governments only have a few years left to avert the worst impacts

VALENCIA, Spain; November 19, 2007.- Delegates stood and applauded after chairman Rajendra Pachauri brought down the gavel on the Nov. 12-17 meeting, which approved a summary for policymakers of 3,000 pages of scientific reports published this year.

“This is the strongest report yet by the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) but says that there is still time to act,” Bill Hare, an Australian climate scientist who was among the authors, told Reuters.

The document, which gives a summary of the latest scientific knowledge on the causes and effects of climate change, will be put before environment ministers at a meeting next month in Bali, Indonesia.

Many countries hope that Bali will agree a two-year strategy to negotiate a successor to the Kyoto Protocol, the main UN plan for fighting warming until 2012, which only covers 36 industrialised nations.

The United States and China, the two main emitters of greenhouse gases, are outside Kyoto.

The summary says that human activity is causing rising temperatures and that deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, mainly from burning fossil fuels, are needed to avert ever more heatwaves, melting glaciers and rising sea levels.

(Reuters)

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