Cuts in Carbon Dioxide Emissions Urged

Cuts in Carbon Dioxide Emissions Urged

Fri Dec 17, 2:48 PM Buenos Aires, Argentina - AP

The world's chief climate scientist, speaking at two-week international climate conference in Buenos Aires in December 2004, disputed the U.S. government contention that cutbacks in carbon dioxide emissions are not yet warranted to check global warming.

Experts readied a report, meanwhile, saying 2004 will be one of the warmest years on record.

"The science says you've got to reduce emissions," Rajendra K. Pachauri told The Associated Press in an interview midway through a two-week international climate conference.

The Kyoto Protocol, the international accord requiring cuts in carbon dioxide, "is driven by the need to reduce emissions, and on that there is no question," said Pachauri, chairman of a U.N.-sponsored network of climatologists.

Scientists largely blame the accumulation of carbon dioxide and other "greenhouse gases" in the atmosphere for the rising temperatures of the past century.
The 10 warmest years globally, since records were first kept in the 19th century, have all occurred since 1990, the top three since 1998. Specialists here this week will issue a report saying 2004 ranks as the fourth- or fifth-warmest year recorded.

Conference delegates from dozens of nations are fine-tuning the workings of the Kyoto pact, which takes effect Feb. 16. It sets targets for 30 industrial nations - excluding the nonparticipating United States and Australia - to reduce emissions of six greenhouse gases, most importantly carbon dioxide, a byproduct of coal, oil and gasoline use.

The United States is a member of the umbrella U.N. treaty on climate change, and it signed that treaty's Kyoto Protocol in 1997. But President Bush renounced the Kyoto agreement in 2001, saying emission reductions would hurt the U.S. economy.