Tropical losers, northern winners from warming? | Science & Health | Reuters

Tue Apr 3, 2007 7:28AM BST
By Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent
OSLO (Reuters)

Northern nations such as Russia or Canada may be celebrating better harvests and less icy winters in coming decades even as rising seas, also caused by global warming, are washing away Pacific island states.

A draft U.N. report to be issued in Brussels on April 6 foresees unequal impacts from warming: tropical nations from Africa to the Pacific, mostly poor, are likely to bear the brunt but those nearer the poles, mostly rich, may briefly benefit.

"At least for a few decades there will be a few winners," said Rajendra Pachauri, the head of U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change of 2,500 experts which will release the report outlining regional impacts of warming.

But he said most scenarios foresee an extended rise in temperatures this century, stoked by rising concentrations of greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels. "Clearly there would be no winners left anywhere," he told Reuters.