BRUSSELS, April 5 (UPI) -- Human-caused climate change is affecting plants and animals, a report to be released in Brussels said.
A draft of the report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which will be released Friday, says "much more evidence has accumulated over the past five years" to indicate that changes such as longer growing seasons and earlier egg-laying by birds are traceable to human activity, The Washington Post reported.
The report is "a sad confirmation of what I have been following for 20 years, namely that nature is very sensitive to climate change, more so than anything else, and that we are seeing responses -- including threshold changes in ecosystems -- in the living world all over the globe," Thomas E. Lovejoy, the president of the H. Heinz III Center for Science, Economics and the Environment in Washington, told the Post via e-mail.
A February IPCC report concluded that humans are likely responsible for the Earth's recent warming.
The report said 20 to 30 of the world's species "are likely to be at high risk of irreversible extinction if global average temperature" rises between 2.4 and 4.5 degrees Fahrenheit, and that humans could suffer, as well, since hunger and disease spread in warmer temperatures.
