***EPW Majority Note: To read Senator James Inhofe’s (R-Okla.) statement reacting to the UNs reported downgrading of Man’s climate impact, Go To: https://www.epw.senate.gov/pressitem.cfm?party=rep&id=266803
THE SUNDAY TELEGRAPH
UN DOWNGRADES MAN ' S IMPACT ON THE CLIMATE
Richard Gray, Science Correspondent, Sunday Telegraph
December 11, 2006
Mankind has had less effect on global warming than previously supposed, a United Nations report on climate change will claim next year.
The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says there can be little doubt that humans are responsible for warming the planet, but the organisation has reduced its overall estimate of this effect by 25 per cent.
In a final draft of its fourth assessment report, to be published in February, the panel reports that the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has accelerated in the past five years. It also predicts that temperatures will rise by up to 4.5 C during the next 100 years, bringing more frequent heat waves and storms.
The panel, however, has lowered predictions of how much sea levels will rise in comparison with its last report in 2001.
Climate change sceptics are expected to seize on the revised figures as evidence that action to combat global warming is less urgent.
Scientists insist that the lower estimates for sea levels and the human impact on global warming are simply a refinement due to better data on how climate works rather than a reduction in the risk posed by global warming.

THE INDEPENDENT

COW ' EMISSIONS ' MORE DAMAGING TO PLANET THAN CO2 FROM CARS By Geoffrey Lean, Environment Editor

December 10, 2006

Meet the world ' s top destroyer of the environment. It is not the car, or the plane,or even George Bush: it is the cow.

A United Nations report has identified the world ' s rapidly growing herds of cattle as the greatest threat to the climate, forests and wildlife. And they are blamed for a host of other environmental crimes, from acid rain to the introduction of alien species, from producing deserts to creating dead zones in the oceans, from poisoning rivers and drinking water to destroying coral reefs.

The 400-page report by the Food and Agricultural Organisation, entitled Livestock ' s Long Shadow, also surveys the damage done by sheep, chickens, pigs and goats. But in almost every case, the world ' s 1.5 billion cattle are most to blame. Livestock are responsible for 18 per cent of the greenhouse gases that cause global warming, more than cars, planes and all other forms of transport put together.

Burning fuel to produce fertiliser to grow feed, to produce meat and to transport it - and clearing vegetation for grazing - produces 9 per cent of all emissions of carbon dioxide, the most common greenhouse gas. And their wind and manure emit more than one third of emissions of another, methane, which warms the world 20 times faster than carbon dioxide.

Livestock also produces more than 100 other polluting gases, including more than two-thirds of the world ' s emissions of ammonia, one of the main causes of acid rain.

Click here for the full text of the article: http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/article2062484.ece

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