'Climate change could be irreversible'

(ANSA) - Rome, August 27 - Man-made global warming is happening, and it could be irreversible, a report by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said Wednesday.
    "Risks caused by climate change will almost certainly be high or very high by the end of the century" if humankind doesn't significantly reduce its carbon emissions, the IPCC warned in a draft report to be presented at an international climate change conference in Copenhagen in October.
    Should greenhouse gas emissions continue at their current pace, the average planetary temperature will increase by two degrees centigrade over the 1986-2005 period, reaching 3.7 degrees by 2050, the IPCC said.
    Increases in the Earth's temperature mean more heat waves, droughts, increasingly powerful typhoons and wildfires, melting glaciers and ice caps, and rising sea levels, scientists and environmentalists said.