Report Cites Global Warming Cause, Effects

(CBS/AP)  Next week, an international panel of top climate scientists, including Americans, will issue a long-awaited report on climate change.

The long-awaited report to be published next week puts hard scientific fact behind the cliché images of global warming. A final draft, obtained by CBS News, contains the strongest language yet on how fast the world is heating up and who to blame.

The answer? Us.

The study traces global temperatures and so-called greenhouse gases going back thousands of years. It shows a gradual variation until the Industrial Revolution begins, when fossil fuel use skyrockets, as do temperatures, CBS News correspondent Mark Phillips reports.

"As we add to those gasses, we are just doing the same thing as putting another blanket on our bed at night," said Sir David King, British chief government scientific adviser. "The consequences are that you get warmer, and that is as simple as it is."

The panel now feels the science is there to make confident predictions that are likely or almost certain. They include:

More warmer days and fewer cold ones;

More heat waves;

Increasingly intense tropical storms and hurricanes;

Higher sea levels.

All of these are driven by "discernable human influences," the report says, Phillips reports.

While this report presents the grim realities of climate change in stark terms, it is not a doomsday scenario. There are responses - scientific, economic, political — that can help limit the damage and help the world react. Government advisers like King say solutions are already available. Among them: limiting emissions, hybrid cars, energy-efficient homes, alternative power sources and less travel.

Meanwhile, world political and economic leaders focused on the threat of global warming as well as the perennial problem of tensions in the Middle East as they gathered for a five-day brainstorming session in Davos.

The session began with several participants pondering remarks the night before by President Bush, who said he would seek $1.6 billion in funding over the next decade for research into alternative energy.

Ex-U.S. Sen. Timothy E. Wirth, a Colorado Democrat who was a former U.S. chief negotiator on the Kyoto Protocol, noted that the remarks were short on specifics, but that Mr. Bush was "understanding finally that this is a serious issue that the U.S. has to address."

Wirth added that the U.S. needed to provide leadership, but acknowledged it would be hard for Mr. Bush to do that.

"We will wait for John McCain or Hillary Clinton ... or somebody who will be in a very different position in 2009," he said, referring to the two senators who are considered the front-runners for the Republican and Democratic parties in the 2008 election.

About 2,400 business and political leaders, journalists, bloggers and celebrities — including musicians and social activists Bono and Peter Gabriel — are at the five-day annual gathering to talk politics, economics and social issues in an atmosphere aimed at finding long-term solutions instead of quick fixes.

Some 24 heads of state are due to attend to the meeting, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who gave the keynote address, and British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who was warmly greeted in 2005 when he and Treasury chief Gordon Brown proposed massive debt relief for Third World countries.

But this year's meeting promises a return to forums of old, with a heavy emphasis on the issues that the WEF's members, most of them businesses, are facing.

"Darfur is currently one of our two or three major concerns at the moment," U.N. refugee chief Antonio Guterres told The Associated Press at a media luncheon. "I believe the WEF is more absorbed this year with economics than these dramatic events" in Darfur.

Previous meetings have been criticized for becoming too entertainment-oriented, with hordes of media staking out Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt, among others.

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[brainworms1]

$1.6B over the next 10 years for alternative fuels or $2B/week for the war in Iraq. Like our president, it sounds like a no-brainer. Maybe the real plan is to prevent all that oil in Iraq from being burned. Yeah, that's it.

[larry0091]

The catastrophe caused by global warming IS the solution. It's the only one that works in my opinion.

[antoniof123]

I have to admit that the best one was the one that said warmer days and and put a positive spin on it. Hey all it is too late to stop it in fact it has been that way for a long time now. Besides when the Earth gets full of *** guess what it does the same things humans do. So have a nice day and enjoy your life because sonner or later you have to pay the price.

[jake_the_cat]

Destroying the rain forests is a key problem, we should also take in to account the fact that humanity is pumping 70 million tons of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere everyday.

Ignorance is not pretty da_bulldawg.

[cantshutup]

also...please see the documentary WHO KILLED THE ELECTRIC CAR? the oil and automotive industries, the federal government and us slackers are the reason we aren't driving electric cars...see the movie!

[cantshutup]

I spent about $50 to replace all my light bulbs with flourescent...it is worth it believe me and in 5 yrs I haven't had to replace one yet!

[susanhelit]

"switch your 75 watt bulb with a 42 watt florescent to "save" 33 lousy watts " is a real solution. Because there's billions of us, so that's billions and billions of watts. Each of us cuts back a little, and it's big. WalMart cuts back a lot - and it's something, but still doesn't match what even a small cut multiplied by billions of people can do.

Everything matters! Letting yourself pollute and waste, multiplied by a billion more of you is an immense impact.

[susanhelit]

Yay! More warm days - right?

Yeah, and it's nice to eat candy all the time too. Too bad it'll kill you.

(aside from any ethical issues about not caring about everyone getting hit with hurricanes, and crops destroyed by a lack of rain, and just an innumerable number of silly things wrong with this concept).

[nothappyatall]

# More warmer days and fewer cold ones;
# More heat waves;
# Increasingly intense tropical storms and hurricanes;
# Higher sea levels.

Let's look at those issues, more warmer days, fewer cold ones- sounds GREAT to me! less use of the furnace- that saves burning gas and it's pullution.

More heat waves, so what? take a dip, dress light, stay indoors, use a fan.

Tropical storms and hurricanes,so what, I'm in the midwest- doesn't affect me.

Higher sea levels, so what? doesn't affect me, the sea levels rise you build up the beach or move inland to higher ground.

More Carbon dioxide in the air, good, did you know that all plants, grasses, flowers, weeds and trees USE Carbon dioxide the way we use oxygen? the more CD in the air the better they do and the more oxygen THEY put out as their "waste" product- it's self regulating, warmer climate means they will grow more, faster and longer.

[nothappyatall]

No one is hoodwinked, global warming is 100% absolute FACT- photos from satellites and high altitudes, as well as comparing modern photos of high mountains and glaciers with old photos PROVES it- the ice is melting away rapidly.

Formerly snow capped mountains are now bare or almost bare, long standing ancient glaciers photographed a few decades ago compared to today show obvious proof they are melting away- rapidly.
The ONLY question that needs answers and proof which remains is; the CAUSE

The CAUSE is far less important than the knowlege that it *IS* here, because nothing we DO or don't do is going to make the slightest bit of difference NOW, the change is so widepspread and
rapid that your walking to work one day a week, turning out the light in that spare bedroom, or recycling that plastic grocery bag etc isn't going to do diddly squat.

The fact is having that SECOND or third kid is the problem- producing too many people for a limited sealed environment. Had we not had the 47 million abortions since 1973 we would have about 70 million MORE people today on top of the 300 million already- and about 70 million more CARS, homes, toilets, air conditioners etc
We had 100 million people in 1950 in the USA, the FACT that it has more than tripled in just 55 years is THE problem, not whether you switch your 75 watt bulb with a 42 watt florescent to "save" 33 lousy watts while Walmart and your local malls and Xmas displays burn up millions of watts on signs and tree lights.