PARIS (AP) – A long-awaited report says global warming is “very likely” man-made, the most powerful language ever used on the issue by the world’s leading climate scientists, delegates who have seen the report said Thursday.
And it says the disturbing signs are already visible in rising seas, killer heat waves, worsening droughts and stronger hurricanes.
There was another signal, too: The City of Light dimmed the lights.
Slowly, starting first with the iconic Eiffel Tower and then spreading to the hotel where many scientists were staying, Paris quieted and dimmed ever so slightly, even as those still fine-tuning the document burned the midnight oil.
The report being released Friday from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change _ a group of hundreds of scientists and representatives of 113 governments _ unanimously portrays the science of global warming as an existing and worsening threat, officials told The Associated Press.
“There’s no question that the powerful language is intimately linked to the more powerful science,” said study co-author Andrew Weaver of the University of Victoria. Weaver said it is all based on science that is rock-solid, peer-reviewed, conservative and consensus: “It’s very conservative. Scientists by their nature are skeptics.”
The scientists wrote the report, based on years of peer-reviewed research; government officials edited it so that it would receive the required unanimous approval by world governments.