The Great Debate UK

from Environment Forum:

Global warming accelerates; Climategate rumbles on

A report by a group of leading scientists that global warming is accelerating and that world sea levels could rise at worst by 2 metres by 2100* is grim reading.

But sceptics are using a flood of leaked e-mails from a British University -- dubbed "Climategate" -- to question the findings.

You can read the Copenhagen Diagnosis here, by 26 researchers worldwide.  It says a thaw of summer sea ice around the North Pole, for instance, has far outpaced projections in a report by the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) two years ago. They say world emissions must peak by 2020 to avoid the worst of climate change.

They say that sea levels could rise by perhaps a metre, at worst 2 -- a figure also mentioned recently by U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon -- and far above scenarios in 2007 by the IPCC. More than 190 nations will meet in Copenhagen from Dec. 7-18 to try to agree a new pact to combat global warming.