The result of four days of talks involving representatives from 130 governments and over 400 climate change experts, the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report concluded that the world can slow and then ultimately reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the next few decades with the help of cost-effective policies and current and emerging technologies. As reported at the end of April by Global Cool, this is the IPCC’s third report of 2007.

“If we continue to do what we are doing now, we are in deep trouble,” said Ogunlade Davidson of Sierra Leone, co-chair of the IPCC Working Group that produced the report. “This report is all about solutions to climate change.”

The solutions include simple measures such as using more efficient electrical appliances and generating energy from renewable resources, as well as more controversial options such as investing in advanced nuclear power and the relatively undeveloped technology of storing CO2 underground.

If the world takes action now, the IPCC report concluded, global greenhouse gas emissions could peak by as early as 2015, falling to 50-85 percent of 2000 levels by 2050. This could then limit global mean temperature increases to 2-2.4C above pre-industrial levels, the point generally accepted as the tipping point at which the most catastrophic effects of climate change will occur.

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