Leaders urged to cut deeper to limit warming to 1.5C

WORLD leaders should boost the target set at Copenhagen and limit global temperature rises to 1.5C, not 2C, from pre-industrial levels.

WORLD leaders should boost the target set at Copenhagen and limit global temperature rises to 1.5C, not 2C, from pre-industrial levels.

This is according to a draft agreement from the UN climate change conference in Cancun.

The draft agreement was released on the eve of the second week at Cancun as Britain's leading climate science institutions rejected doomsday warnings but found that some risks posed by global warming were greater than had been stated. The study said claims about the slowing down of the Gulf Stream, with potentially catastrophic consequences, had been exaggerated, but that the North Pole could be ice-free as early as 2060 -- two decades earlier than predicted in the latest statement by the Intergovernmental panel on climate change.

The study also said evidence from new computer models suggested emissions of methane, a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide, would increase by up to 35 per cent for every degree of global temperature increase.

These findings strengthen the claim that a warming climate will trigger a vicious circle of rising emissions from the thawing and drying of landscapes.

The review by the Met Office, the Grantham Institute for Climate Change at Imperial College and the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research concluded: "There is overwhelming agreement on the fundamentals -- that our climate is changing and this represents a real and urgent problem."

The call to bolster the Copenhagen target at Cancun was made in a draft statement by negotiators considering long-term action by the world against global warming.

It calls for a review of whether the Copenhagen goal for limiting warming should be strengthened to 1.5C in light of a warning by scientists that the world faces growing natural disasters and extinction of species because of climate change.

The agreement will restate a commitment by developed countries to mobilise $US100 billion ($101bn) a year by 2020 to help the poorest nations adapt to climate change.

Australia's Climate Change Minister, Greg Combet, has been appointed to facilitate political discussions on climate change finance at Cancun.

AGENCIES, THE TIMES