Climate-change report expected to project rising temperatures...

In a new report issued on Monday, the United Nations Environment Program said that the most recent evidence from mountain glaciers showed they were melting faster than before, or 1.6 times the average of the 1990s and three times the loss rate of the 1980s. The agency warned that the trend was likely to continue because 2006 was one of the warmest years on record in many parts of the world.

Also Monday, there were new concerns about climate change from low- lying parts of the world. Indonesia could lose about 2,000 islands by 2030 because of warming, Environment Minister Rachmat Witoelar said.

Over the past year, international concern over what to do about global warming has grown along with concrete signs of climate change in developing regions like Africa, where water is running low, and in developed regions, like Europe, where there was a marked lack of snow at Alpine ski resorts in early January.

Even so, political leaders are groping for ways to tackle the problem. Europe has adopted a program that caps the amount of emissions from industrial producers.

But the world's largest emitter, the United States, is still debating whether to adopt a similar policy and developing countries like China are resisting caps on the grounds that the industrialized world contributed about 75 percent of the current volume of greenhouse gases and should make the deepest cuts.

That situation has hampered the chances of an effective solution, which experts say will require all countries to cut emissions or become more energy efficient.

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One key point of controversy in recent drafts of the summary is a smaller rise in sea level than the last report projected. In the next several days, scientists relying on field observations and computer models of ocean and ice behavior in a warming world will struggle to find a consensus.

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Some scientists say that the figures used in the new report are overly conservative because they leave out recent observations of instability in some ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland.

Ice loss in those regions has been very sudden in some cases, implying a more rapid rise in sea levels than projected by some computer models.

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the United Nations Environment Program said that the most recent evidence from mountain glaciers showed they were melting faster than before, or 1.6 times the average of the 1990s and three times the loss rate of the 1980s. The agency warned that the trend was likely to continue because 2006 was one of the warmest years on record in many parts of the world.

Highlighted by patrickn

Even so, political leaders are groping for ways to tackle the problem. Europe has adopted a program that caps the amount of emissions from industrial producers.

But the world's largest emitter, the United States, is still debating whether to adopt a similar policy and developing countries like China are resisting caps on the grounds that the industrialized world contributed about 75 percent of the current volume of greenhouse gases and should make the deepest cuts.

Highlighted by patrickn