Danger: irreversible climate-change forces at work

Campaigners against global warming and their bitterest opponents are united by one word this weekend: irreversible.

It appears 48 times in the draft of the most important report so far on climate change, being finalised today in Copenhagen, signifying that unless the world takes speedy action to curb emissions of greenhouse gases their dire effect will last for thousands of years, at least.

Reversal also motivates a growing number of sceptics calling for repeal of Britain’s Climate Change Act which is, they say, driving the country into unique dependence on unreliable renewable sources of energy. The two views are bound to clash ever more vigorously in the run-up to a planned international climate agreement in Paris next December.

The new report, to be published tomorrow by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), aims to provide the “road map” for that treaty. The culmination of a series of four over the last year, it is still being argued over, line by line, by the world’s governments and top scientists.