Earlier this week, we flagged a World Meteorological Association release noting a correlation between the record number of extreme weather events this year and record breaking global land surface temperatures. Now, the head of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) says that climate change could lead to potential food shortages and increase the risk of hunger in developing countries. India, says, FAO Director-General Jacques Diouf, will be particularly hard hit, potentially losing 125 million tons of its rain-fed cereal production, or about 20% of its total cereal production.

The New York Times has more.

From the Scientific American:

The world experienced a series of record-breaking weather events in early 2007, from flooding in Asia to heatwaves in Europe and snowfall in South Africa, the United Nations weather agency said on Tuesday.

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said global land surface temperatures in January and April were likely the warmest since records began in 1880, at more than 1 degree Celsius higher than average for those months.

There have also been severe monsoon floods across South Asia, abnormally heavy rains in northern Europe, China, Sudan, Mozambique and Uruguay, extreme heatwaves in southeastern Europe and Russia, and unusual snowfall in South Africa and South America this year, the WMO said.

Scary stuff. Read more. And click here for access to the full WMO release.

Secretary General Ban ki Moon visited San Francisco yesterday to pay homage to the city that gave birth to the United Nations and also see, first-hand, some of California's cutting edge efforts to fight global warming. But before Ban meets with Governor Schwarzenegger later today, he had a personal stop to make. From the San Francisco Chronicle:

...as soon as his airplane lands at San Francisco International Airport, Ban's first order of business will be to visit Libba Patterson, 90, of Novato, whose family hosted him on his first visit to the United States more than four decades ago.

"San Francisco is a place close to my heart," Ban told reporters at a news conference at U.N. headquarters in New York last week. "I was a young foreign exchange student in the Bay Area a long, long time ago in 1962. The kind lady who opened her home to me lives just across the (Golden Gate) bridge. I cannot wait to see her."

Later today, Ban and Gov. Schwarzenegger will tour a Silicon Valley firm that has pioneered technology to make homes and businesses more energy efficient.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon spoke about the agreement made by the "Group of Eight" to tackle global warming, saying that he "wholeheartedly welcomes that G8 leaders have agreed on a strong and early action to combat climate change."

As they began their three-day summit in Heiligendamm, Germany, leaders from Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Russian Federation, the United Kingdom and the United States have agreed to seek "substantial" cuts in emissions in an effort to tackle climate change, according to media reports.

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Three climate change envoys, newly-appointed by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, say that global warming must be tackled at the international political level.

The three envoys - former Norwegian Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland, former Republic of Korea Foreign Minister and General Assembly President Han Seung-soo and former Chilean President Ricardo Lagos Escobar - held a working luncheon today with Mr. Ban, who announced earlier this year that tackling climate change is one of his priorities as head of the UN.

Brundtland said, "We know that the world is warming up, and we know that the issue is to be able to act quickly enough so that we can avoid the types of dramatic consequences that are also irreversible... without sufficient action."

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Yesterday, for the first time, the UN Security Council addressed the issue of climate change, energy, and global security (video: part 1 | part 2). I sat in on the six-plus-hour open session, called by the British and led by British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett. Although the major news outlets focused on a disagreement between the G-77 and the developed world over the appropriateness of the venue, there were many other topics that were discussed that could have bearing on the way the world chooses to the face the effects of climate change.

The over-reported rift between the developed world and the G-77 and China was not centered on Climate Change but on the role of the Security Council. The G-77, wary of what the Deputy Perm Rep from Pakistan called "ever-increasing encroachment by the Security Council on the roles and responsibility of other principal organs of the UN," protested that the Security Council has, as the Chinese Perm Rep put it, "neither the professional competence in handling climate change -- nor is it the right decision-making place for extensive participation leading up to widely acceptable proposals," making the not invalid point that the make-up of the Security Council doesn't properly reflect the current global power structure.

Most of the developed world, led by the UK, made the following counter arguments. First, it's a broad problem, potentially devastating to the human race in a number of ways; it would be a disservice to the magnitude of the issue not to confront it on as many fronts as possible. And, second, it is clearly a security issue. Foreign Secretary Beckett said:

Recent scientific evidence has...given us a picture of the physical impacts on our world that we can expect as our climate changes. And those impacts go far beyond the environmental. Their consequences reach to the very heart of the security agenda. The consequences of flooding, disease and famine and from that migration on an unprecedented scale. The consequences of drought and crop-failure and from that intensified competition for food, water and energy. The consequences of economic disruption on the scale predicted in the Stern Report and not seen since the end of World War II.

Though this rift got a lot of attention, it was not nearly the most interesting thing to come out of yesterday's session.

True many (but not all) G-77 countries argued that climate change is a development issue not a security issue and expressed concern about the economic cost of adaptation, but it was almost universally agreed that it is a grave and global issue and one that has "left the global community with one option: international collective action" through the United Nations, as the representative from Qatar put it. In fact the sheer number of statements that were made (around 55, a record) point to how serious the world community is taking climate change. Even those who felt the Security Council was an inappropriate venue for this discussion took the opportunity yesterday to express their concerns about climate change and their commitment to adequately confronting it.

In fact, several Member States talked about effects of climate change that are already manifest in their countries. The representative from Ghana pointed to rising temperatures, which are contributing to drought and the expanding Sahara desert, and food shortages. The representative from Peru discussed shrinking glaciers in his nation and the effect on water supply. And the representative from Costa Rica talked about increased hurricanes and flooding.

That consensus was also reflected in the fact that nearly every Member State drew on the authority and findings of the IPCC report as a foundation for their remarks. This consensus among the world's climate scientists appears now to be developing into a consensus among world governments.

In a way, these facts alone mark the meeting as a success. The representatives from the UK, the Netherlands, and Panama mentioned a similar thematic session on HIV/AIDS held by the Security Council and the benefits that were reaped simply from developing consensus on the gravity of the threat and moving the issue "from the fringes into the mainstream."

Regardless of whether or not those effects are repeated in this instance, the international effort on climate change will certainly be bolstered by the Secretary-General Ban's commitment to the issue. During his remarks to the special session yesterday, the Secretary-General talked at length about the IPCC report, the scarcity of resources as a catalyst for conflict, and the importance of the "entire multilateral machinery" working together to mitigate the effects of climate change, as well as the importance of engagement with civil society and the private sector.

Although the consensus on the need for forward movement was clear, the way forward is a little more diffuse. Many in the developing world maintained that a Framework for addressing climate change already exists and that it is incumbent on the developed world to begin to do their share of emission cutting. "Common but differentiated" was repeated often. The representative from the Congo went so far as to say that, through the effects of climate change, the poor will pay "for the excess consumption and carefree attitude of the rich." Many developed nations, on the other hand, called for the immediate development of a successor regime to the Kyoto Protocol, which is set to expire in 2012, and action by the Secretary-General on hosting a world climate summit.

Regardless of which tactics are chosen, proponents of collective action on climate change should feel optimistic about yesterday's session. It appears as if a global consensus has been gained on the gravity of climate change.

Last week, the Scientific Expert Group on Climate Change and Sustainable Development released their final report, facilitated by the United Nations Foundation and the distinguished scientific society Sigma Xi. The report is a roadmap for global climate change and promotes a two-pronged strategy: avoiding the unmanageable (mitigation) and managing the unavoidable (adaptation).

The scientific state of play, similarly outlined in the IPCC's report earlier this month, is sobering. In fact, a large section is dedicated to adapting to the effects of climate change that we can not feasibly avoid at this point. The global-average surface temperature is 0.8 degrees Celsius (1.44 degrees Fahrenheit) above what it was a little over 250 years ago. And, if carbon dioxide emissions grow according to relatively reserved calculations, that temperature will continue to rise by 0.2 to 0.4 degrees Celsius (0.36 to 0.72 degrees Fahrenheit) each decade over the next 100 years. The group writes:

In our judgment and that of a growing number of other analysts and groups, however, increases beyond 2 degrees Celsius to 2.5 degrees Celsius above the 1750 level will entail sharply rising risks of crossing a climate "tipping point" that could lead to intolerable impacts on human well-being, in spite of all feasible attempts at adaptation.

Although it's impossible to know exactly what those "intolerable impacts" will look like, the group suggests that it will include an increase in extreme weather events, an accelerating rise in sea-levels, and mass shifting of ecosystem boundaries.

The good news is that the report finds opportunities for confronting the challenge of global climate change, many of which hold promise for boosting the global economy also. These include using non-fossil fuel energy supply options, building coal power plants only if they can be affordably retrofitted to capture and sequester carbon dioxide, increasing efficiency in transportation and in the building sector, expanding the use of biofuels in transportation, promoting reforestation, and tripling or quadrupling public and private investment in energy R&D. If we make feasible advancements in these areas, carbon dioxide emissions in 2100 could be reduced to 20 percent of the dire mid-range estimate given above, enough to stabilize atmospheric carbon dioxide at a level below the possible global turning point.

It's also important to note that shifting to a new energy economy will be vital to achieving the Millennium Development Goals, as the report makes clear. It is no coincidence that there are 2 billion people around the world living on less than $2 a day and also 2 billion who are energy impoverished.

The SEG report, prepared as input for the upcoming meeting of the UN's Commission on Sustainable Development, recognizes the central role that the UN will play in the efforts listed above and establishes a list of hefty goals for the UN to achieve. Those include, "helping developing countries and countries with economies in transition to finance and deploy energy efficient and new energy technologies, accelerating negotiations to develop a successor international framework for addressing climate change and sustainable development, and educating all about the opportunities to adopt mitigation and adaptation measures." It will be impossible to achieve the necessary reductions in carbon dioxide emissions unless the problem is confronted multilaterally and with a firm commitment from all nations. And, as always, it will also require active engagement through the UN and the application of adequate political will by key member states, especially the United States.