Top U.N. official warns against inaction on climate

By Richard Waddington

VALENCIA, Spain (Reuters) - The United Nations' top climate official on Monday warned scientists and government officials from some 130 countries that failure to act on climate change while there was time would be "criminally irresponsible."

Addressing the U.N.'s climate panel, joint winners of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize along with former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, Yvo de Boer, head of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, said the message to world leaders was clear.

"Failure to recognize the urgency of this message and to act on it would be nothing less than criminally irresponsible," said de Boer.

Scientists and government officials from the 130-state Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) are meeting in this Spanish port city until November 17.

They aim to condense the findings of three reports they have issued this year on the causes, consequences and possible remedies for climate change into a brief summary that policy-makers can use to take decisions.

A draft circulated ahead of the conference blames human activities for rising temperatures and says cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, mainly from burning fossil fuels, are needed to avert more heat waves, melting glaciers and rising seas.

Global warming is already under way and its effects will be negative overall.

"Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, as is now evident from observations of increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice, and rising global average sea level," it says.