PARIS (AP) – Scientists from around the world gathered Monday in Paris to finalize a long-awaited, authoritative report on climate change, expected to give a grim warning of rising temperatures and sea levels worldwide.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is to unveil its latest assessment of the environmental threat posed by global warming on Friday.
As the panel meets, the planet is the warmest it has been in thousands of years, if not more, and international concern over what to do about it is at an all-time high.
“At no time in the past has there been such a global appetite” for reliable information on global warming, the panel’s chairman, Rajendra Pachauri of India, told the conference.
Scientists are keeping quiet about the contents of the report, but say it is both more specific and more sweeping than the panel’s previous efforts.