Report: Global warming will melt Himalayas

For people in their 30s, climate change has already reshaped the world into which they were born.

By the time they reach retirement, the changes will be far more dramatic and perhaps life-threatening on a massive scale, an authoritative UN study will say this week.

Today, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a network of more than 2,000 scientists, will open a five-day meeting in Brussels, Belgium, to finalize a report on how warming will affect the globe and whether humans can do anything about it.

The panel will paint a bleak picture of increasing poverty, paucity of drinking water, melting glaciers and polar ice caps, and a host of vanishing species by mid-century unless action is taken to curb emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases.

Among the gloomy forecasts, the report predicts that glaciers in the Himalayas, the world's highest mountain range, will melt away, affecting hundreds of millions of people.

"If current warming rates are maintained, Himalayan glaciers could decay at very rapid rates, shrinking from the present 500,000 square kilometers to 100,000 square kilometers by 2030s," according to a draft technical summary.

from The People's Daily (CN)