date: Mon, 30 Oct 2000 13:13:42 +0000 from: FOE Mark Johnston subject: PA: FOE plus UEA to: UEA Martin Parry , c.parry@uea.ac.uk, UEA Mike Hulme Press Association this morning. See esp end para. /mj -------- Original Message -------- From: Neil Verlander Subject: pa: Climate/FOE WILD WEATHER `A SIGN OF CLIMATE CHANGE' By Amanda Brown, Environment Correspondent, PA News Green lobby groups are urging politicians to act now over wild weather conditions, as Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott and Environment Minister Michael Meacher prepare for major international climate change talks in the Hague next month. The gales and storms battering Britain ``are just a taste of things to come'' according to Friends of the Earth. The group says extreme weather worldwide in the last three months has included storms in Taiwan, Brazil and Canada, floods in Bangladesh, Japan, Vietnam and India, fires in the US, Italy and the Balkans and droughts in Burundi, Croatia, Kenya and Iran. Roger Higman, Senior Climate Change Campaigner at FoE, said: ``Dangerous climate change is already happening. The storms and floods we are now seeing will get more frequent and more severe. We desperately need cuts in the use of coal, oil and gas to prevent the worst forecasts coming true. ``That means the Government must stick to a fuel price policy that discourages the use of cars.'' World leaders will be under pressure in the Hague to agree a complex set of rules for carbon trading to try to avert the climate change disaster. But leading climate scientists now agree that human pollution has added to global warming substantially in the last 50 years. The earth is likely to get far warmer than previously forecast according to a summary of the 1,000-page final draft of new research by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations sponsored group of the world's leading scientists. It has been sent to governments in advance of the Hague talks and is expected to add to the urgency of the negotiations. A major report on climate change, ``The Assessment of Potential Effects and Adaptations for Climate Change in Europe'', by Professor Martin Parry and Dr Mike Hulme, both of the University of East Anglia and Dr Jorgen Olesen of the Danish National Agricultural Institute, is due to be published in London on Wednesday. end 301246 OCT 00 -- Neil Verlander Press Office Friends of the Earth 020 7566 1649 (t) 020 7490 0881 (f)