Former IPCC Head Blames Skeptics for Climate Change Inaction

British government advisor and former IPCC head Bob Watson told The Guardian this week that climate change skeptics will be to blame for the projected failure of next month's conference in Copenhagen to reach a global accord on carbon emission targets.

Watson, who is the chief scientist at the department for environment and rural affairs, said that while countries such as Britain are still arguing for an agreement that will limit global warming to two degrees Celsius, the prospects for such a binding agreement are dim. After a decade of inaction, and the failure of the US under the Bush administration to honour the Kyoto Protocol, Watson said that the best to be hoped for is to contain warming to between three and four degrees. "Those that have opposed a deal on climate, which would include elements of the fossil fuel industry, have clearly made making a 2C target much, much harder, if not impossible," Watson said. "The last decade was a lost opportunity." The UN-sponsored Copenhagen Climate Change Conference, scheduled for December 7, will be another chapter in continuing efforts to craft a global agreement to replace the Kyoto Protocol. However, many observers are doubting, among other things, whether major countries like the US and China will commit to decade-long carbon emission targets. Last month, the British government published an online global map showing the expected effects of a four degree temperature rise. Diverse negative effects are shown spread across the globe, including increased forest fires on all continents, drought in South America, Europe, Africa and Asia, and decreased crop yields in major agricultural areas.