IPCC 4th Assessment Report on Climate Change

The IPCC report comes as environment ministers prepare for the 3-14 December Bali talks, where they will be asked to agree a two-year 'roadmap' of negotiations for accelerating cuts in greenhouse gases. On current trends, it says, surging emissions of greenhouse gases will relentlessly warm earth's atmosphere, damaging ice and snow cover and causing the oceans to expand and thus rise. The impacts could be "abrupt or irreversible". In such a scenario, humans would face wide-ranging misery in the form of crop failure, storm damage and ill health as drought, floods, cyclones, mosquito pests and water-borne disease become more frequent or intensive, it adds.