U.S. and China Water Down Climate Change Report

At the insistence of the U.S. and China, the policymaker summary of the latest International Panel on Climate Change report, issued last Friday by the world's leading climate scientists, was stripped of references to the near-unanimity of scientific opinion on the magnitude of expected impacts and the importance of taking our collective foot off the gas pedal.

Yesterday's report, titled, "Climate Change 2007: Climate Change
Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability," warned that human-generated warming is already making oceans more acidic and parched regions even drier. Twenty to 30 percent of the world's species may disappear if the world warms another 2.7 to 4.5 degrees Fahrenheit, the authors concluded, and the risk of massive floods will increase significantly along the coasts because of rising seas and more intense storms. [...]

The report also examines how infectious diseases might spread in a warmer climate. [...]

"Climate change presents one of the most challenging environmental and public health threats of this millennium," Patz said.

Fortunately -- if anything can be considered 'fortunate' about this whole debate -- the problem is so obvious that myopic political maneuvering won't fool anyone.

"The conclusions in the report are so scary that whatever success the
Bush administration may have had in watering down the language won't have any impact on what the reaction of the world will be," Markey said in an interview, adding that Bush will soon have to decide whether to veto an emissions cap.

U.S., China Got Climate Warnings Toned Down [Washington Post]