Experts meet on UN report warming can be slowed

BANGKOK, Apr 29 (Reuters) After two gloomy United Nations reports on global warming, scientists and governments tomorrow begin looking at how to fight climate change with green groups saying the time for bickering is over.

As experts meet in Bangkok to review the latest UN report, a draft of solutions to be issued on Friday after review by more than 100 nations warns that time for inexpensive fixes is running out because of a surge in greenhouse gas emissions.

The survey is the third this year by the UN climate panel after one in February saying it was at least 90 per cent certain that mankind was to blame for warming and another on April 6 warning of more hunger, droughts, heatwaves and rising seas.

''We're moving from two very sobering reports to what we can do about climate change. And we can do it,'' Achim Steiner, the head of the U.N. Environment Programme, told Reuters of the report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

''Having shown us the path towards greater and greater problems the IPCC raises our horizons to where the solutions lie and shows that they are within our grasp,'' he told Reuters.

The report estimates that stabilising greenhouse gas emissions will cost between 0.2 per cent and 3.0 per cent of world gross domestic product by 2030, depending on the stiffness of curbs on rising emissions of greenhouse gases.

Under some scenarios, GDP growth might even get a tiny net spur from less pollution and health damage from burning fossil fuels, blamed as the main cause of warming.

The draft says: ''There is a significant economic potential for the mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions from all sectors over the coming decades, sufficient to offset growth of global emissions or to reduce emissions below current levels.'' The conclusions broadly back those by former World Bank chief economist Nicholas Stern, who estimated last year that costs of acting now to slow warming were about one percent of global output, 5 to 20 per cent if the world delayed action.

More than 1,000 amendments have been proposed to the draft 24-page summary for policymakers. Some countries complain that is hard to understand and too laden with scientific jargon.

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