BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) - An international global warming conference approved a report Friday warning of dire threats to the Earth and to mankind - from increased hunger to the extinction of species - unless the world adapts to climate change and halts its progress.
Agreement came after an all-night session during which key sections were deleted from the draft and scientists angrily confronted government negotiators who they feared were watering down their findings.
"It has been a complex exercise," said Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Several scientists objected to the editing of the final draft by government negotiators but in the end agreed to compromises. However, some scientists vowed never to take part in the process again.
The climax of five days of negotiations was reached when the delegates removed parts of a key chart highlighting devastating effects of climate change that kick in with every rise of 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit, and in a tussle over the level of scientific reliability attached to key statements.
There was little doubt about the science, which was based on 29,000 sets of data, much of it collected in the last five years. "For the first time we are not just arm-waving with models," Martin Perry, who conducted the grueling negotiations, told reporters.
The United States, China and Saudi Arabia raised the many of the objections to the phrasing, often seeking to tone down the certainty of some of the more dire projections.
The final IPCC report is the clearest and most comprehensive scientific statement to date on the impact of global warming mainly caused by man-induced carbon dioxide pollution.
It said up to 30 percent of the Earth's species face an increased risk of vanishing if global temperatures rise 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit above the average in the 1980s and '90s.
Areas that now suffer a shortage of rain will become even more dry, adding to the risks of hunger and disease, it said. The world will face heightened threats of flooding, severe storms and the erosion of coastlines.
"This is a glimpse into an apocalyptic future," the Greenpeace environmental group said of the final report.
Negotiators pored over the 21-page draft meant to be a policy guide for governments. The summary pares down the full 1,500-page scientific assessment of the evidence of climate change so far, and the impact it will have on the Earth's most vulnerable people and ecosystems.
More than 120 nations attended the meeting. Each word was approved by consensus, and any change had to be approved by the scientists who drew up that section of the report.
Though weakened by the deletion of some elements, the final report "will send a very, very clear signal" to governments, said Yvo de Boer, the U.N.'s top climate official.
The summary will be presented to the G8 summit of the world's richest nations in June, when the European Union is expected to renew appeals to President Bush to join in international efforts to control emissions of fossil fuels.
This year's series of reports by the IPCC were the first in six years from the prestigious body of some 2,500 scientists, formed in 1988. Public awareness of climate change gave the IPCC's work unaccustomed importance and fueled the intensity of the closed-door negotiations during the five-day meeting.
"The urgency of this report prepared by the world's top scientists should be matched by an equally urgent response from governments," said Hans Verolme, director of the global climate change program of the World Wide Fund for Nature.
"Doing nothing is not an option," he said.
During the final session, the conference snagged over a sentence that said the impact of climate change already were being observed on every continent and in most oceans.
"There is very high confidence that many natural systems are being affected by regional climate changes, particularly temperature increases," said the statement on the first page of text.
But China insisted on striking the word "very," injecting a measure of doubt into what the scientists argued were indisputable observations. The report's three authors refused to go along with the change, resulting in an hours-long deadlock that was broken by a U.S. compromise to delete any reference to confidence levels.
It is the second of four reports from the IPCC this year; the first report in February laid out the scientific case for how global warming is happening. This second report is the "so what" report, explaining what the effects of global warming will be.
European Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas said the report will spur the EU's determination to curb greenhouse gas emissions.
"The world needs to act fast if we are to succeed in stabilizing climate change and thereby prevent its worst impacts," Dimas said in a statement.
For the first time, the scientists broke down their predictions into regions, and forecast that climate change will affect billions of people.
North America will experience more severe storms with human and economic loss, and cultural and social disruptions. It can expect more hurricanes, floods, droughts, heat waves and wildfires, it said. Coasts will be swamped by rising sea levels. In the short term, crop yields may increase by 5 to 20 percent from a longer growing season, but will plummet if temperatures rise by 7.2 F.
Africa will be hardest hit. By 2020, up to 250 million people are likely to exposed to water shortages. In some countries, food production could fall by half, it said.
Parts of Asia are threatened with massive flooding and avalanches from melting Himalayan glaciers. Europe also will see its Alpine glaciers disappear. Australia's Great Barrier Reef will lose much of its coral to bleaching from even moderate increases in sea temperatures, the report said.
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CBS/AP) Never mind the Easter bonnets. In a large swath of the U.S., you had better remember where you put your winter hat and put it on.
Just about everywhere east of the Rockies, it's extremely cold for this time of year – with snow in parts of the Northeast and Midwest, and freezing temperatures elsewhere - and it's going to stay this way right through the weekend.
Parts of the upper Northeast are slogging through over a foot of snow which closed schools, tangled traffic and knocked out power to more than 180,000 homes and businesses.
Frost and freeze warnings are in effect for the next few nights throughout much of the Southeast, while the snow continues to pile up across portions of the Great Lakes and the Northeast, which has seen more snow so far this April than what fell over the entire month of December.
The cold weather, says CBS News meteorologist George Cullen, is the result of an intense storm system sweeping down extremely cold air from central Canada on down to the eastern half of the U.S.
The result, says Cullen, is temperatures 15 to 30 degrees below normal, with many record lows likely over the weekend, from the Ohio Valley on down to southeast coast.
At least two deaths – traffic accidents in New Hampshire and Michigan - are blamed on the wintry weather, which began late Wednesday.
The flakes fell at a rate of up to 2 inches per hour, and by early Thursday, areas of Maine already had nearly a foot and a half of wet, heavy snow, and central New Hampshire saw 16 inches in spots. Up to 24 inches fell in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, as many as 13 inches in Vermont, and upstate New York had several inches as well.
In Kansas, five to eight inches of snow is on the ground in the east-central and north-central parts of the state, and with temperatures expected to dip into the lower 20s and teens in the next few days, farmers are worried about their crops.
The cold snap came after two weeks of exceptionally warm weather, with highs around Kansas of from 60 to 80 degrees, speeding up the growth of the wheat by about two weeks.
"I'm concerned," says Saline County wheat farmer Gary Olson. "Usually if it gets below 24 degrees, the experts tell us our wheat crop might be in trouble."
"We're pretty vulnerable," says Tom Maxwell, agricultural extension agent in Salina. If the weatherman's right, he adds, "we're going to see some damage."
In Nebraska, it's also cold and snowy, but some locals are unimpressed, pointing out that snow in early April is far from unprecedented in the Plains.
In Arkansas, snow is not an issue, but the cold is – with freeze warnings in effect and record lows expected over the weekend.
Things will also be a lot nippier than usual in Augusta, Ga., home of the Masters golf tournament, already underway.
It will be one of the coldest Masters ever, says Cullen, with temperatures struggling to get out of the 50s. "Usually the temperatures are not lower than the scores; this year, they will be."
