Climate Worse Off than Predicted

As the U.S. readies for the climate summit in Copenhagen next month, scientists and experts are realizing that the current climate looks much more dire than what models predicted in 1997, at the last international accord in Kyoto. At the time, the U.S. withdrew from signing the accord, and China and India weren't a part of it either, even though the three countries comprise the world's top carbon polluters. Since then, world carbon-dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels have risen 31 percent, much of it due to China. "The message on the science is that we know a lot more than we did in 1997 and it's all negative," said the president of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change. "Things are much worse than the models predicted."