Climate rescue mission 'not hopeless', says UN climate panel head Rajendra Pachauri

The head of the United Nations's climate science panel urged national policymakers on Monday not to lose heart in the face of a mighty challenge to tackle global warming.

"It is not hopeless," Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Nobel-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), said on opening a five-day IPCC meeting in Copenhagen to complete a landmark report.

Policymakers should "avoid being overcome by the seeming hopelessness of addressing climate change," Pachauri said.

The meeting must approve a synthesis report encapsulating the three massive volumes, released over the past 13 months, of the IPCC's Fifth Assessment Report on the available climate science. Meeting behind closed doors, scientists and government representatives are to hammer out a "summary for policymakers" and approve a main document on Friday. These will be unveiled on Sunday.

Governments should make decisions "informed by the science", Pachauri said in a speech relayed on the IPCC website. "I do not envy them. Their task is formidable," Pachauri added, and pointed to the "growing peril" of delaying curbs on greenhouse-gas emissions. "I do not discount those challenges. But... solutions are at hand,"  Pachauri added. "Tremendous strides are being made in alternative sources of clean energy. There is much we can do to use energy more efficiently. Reducing and ultimately eliminating deforestation provides additional avenues for action."

The IPCC's latest assessment report says evidence of man-made global warming is overwhelming, and that there are signs of climate change already on the march. UN members have vowed to limit warming to two degrees Celsius over pre-industrial levels.