UN panel to blame mankind for global warming

UN panel of experts met Monday to review a draft report that raises the probability that climate change is man-made to 95 percent and warns of increasingly extreme weather unless governments take strong action. Scientists and officials from more than 110 governments started a four-day meeting in Stockholm, Sweden to edit and approve the draft that also tries to explain a “hiatus� in the pace of global warming this century despite rising greenhouse-gas emissions. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) will review the document and present it on Friday as a main guide for governments, which have agreed to negotiate a UN deal by the end of 2015 to combat global warming. “I expect the world will understand the simplicity and the gravity of the message that we provide,� IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri said. Achim Steiner, the chief of the UN Environment Program, told delegates that climate change “will transform our lives, our economies, and indeed the way our planet will function in the future.� A shift towards a greener economy, based on renewable energies, would hold multiple benefits for society, he said.