March 11 (Bloomberg) -- World leaders wasted a decade debating whether global warming is happening, and now need to act quickly to limit its effects, a former chairman of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said. The pace of greenhouse-gas emissions risks locking in thousands of years of higher sea levels, as well as damaging marine ecosystems such as coral reefs, melting sea-ice and acidifying the oceans, said Robert Watson, now chief scientific adviser at the U.K. environment ministry.
European nations, which have taken a lead in reducing output of pollution linked to global warming, have ``failed miserably'' to get the U.S., the largest industrialized emitter, to follow suit, or to work well with China and India, Watson said. China's emissions growth will swamp pollution cuts planned by the U.K., Germany and other developed nations, U.S. researchers said.
``Have we squandered the last 10 years? Largely yes,'' Watson told delegates today at the Oceanology International conference in London. ``We should have been acting far more to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions over the last 10 years, especially trying to get technology transfer with developing countries and bringing the United States on board.''
China's greenhouse-gas output is increasing more than previously forecast and will offset planned cuts under the Kyoto Protocol, University of California researchers said in a study that will appear in the May edition of the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management.
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