The UN climate panel issued its strongest warning yet yesterday that human activities are heating the planet, adding pressure on governments to do more to combat accelerating global warming.
The International Panel on Climate Change, an authoritative group on warming of 2,500 scientists from more than 130 nations, predicted more severe rains, melting glaciers, heatwaves and rising sea levels, especially if Antarctica or Greenland thaw.
The final text said it was "very likely" -- or a probability of more than 90 percent -- that human activities led by burning fossil fuels explained most of the warming in the past 50 years.
That is a tougher stance than in the group's last report, in 2001, when the IPCC said the link was "likely," or 66 percent probable. Signs of change range from drought in Australia to record high temperatures in Europe last month.
"February 2, 2007, may be rem-embered as the day the question mark was removed from whether [people] are to blame for climate change," Achim Steiner, the head of the UN Environment Program, told a news conference.
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