Children bear brunt of climate warming

By Jeremy Lovell

LONDON (Reuters) - Children will increasingly bear the brunt of global warming, a report said on Friday, while another said the climate would continue to heat up in coming decades regardless of efforts to curb emissions of carbon gases.

A third report, coming as scientists on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change finalise their analysis of what climate change will do to the planet this century, said business was already feeling its effects.

The Save the Children charity said up to 175 million children would be affected every year over the next decade by climate-related disasters like droughts, floods and storms.

This, it said, was 50 million a year more than in the 10 years to 2005. Being society's vulnerable members, children would be hurt disproportionately, and millions more would be killed, forced from their homes or hit by hunger and disease.

"Children are already bearing the brunt of climate change and there will be millions more children caught up in climate-related natural disasters every year," said Jasmine Whitbread, head of Save the Children UK.

Scientists predict global average temperatures will rise by between 1.8 and 4.0 degrees Celsius this century, mainly due to burning fossil fuels for power and transport.

Business is already starting to feel adverse effects, according to another study on Friday by catastrophe risk modelling firm Risk Management Solutions.

It said financial losses from weather-related catastrophes had risen on average by two percent a year since the 1970s, and pointed to the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina in 2005.