UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon said today that e-mails leaked from a British university have done nothing to undermine the United Nations' view that climate change is accelerating due to humans.
"Nothing that has come out in the public as a result of the recent email hackings has cast doubt on the basic scientific message on climate change and that message is quite clear -- that climate change is happening much, much faster than we realised and we human beings are the primary cause," he said.
Mr Ban was reacting to a row over leaked e-mails from Britain's University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit, which showed some scientists' efforts to boost the credibility of climate change at the expense of skeptics.
Speaking about the UN climate talks in Denmark that began yesterday, Mr Ban said he expected the meeting would be successful, despite widespread expectations it will fail to yield a legally binding agreement on global targets for reducing carbon dioxide emissions.
"I am encouraged and I am optimistic," he told reporters. "I expect a robust agreement at the Copenhagen summit meeting that will be effective immediately and include specific recommendations on mitigation (of the effects of climate change), adaptation, finance and technology."
"This agreement will have an immediate operational effect, as soon as it is agreed," he added.
A key sticking point in the talks is the debate over providing financial aid to poor and developing nations to help them make their economies environmentally friendly and withstand the impacts of a warming climate.
China has said the talks must offer cash to help poor nations adjust to climate change and that the money must be new and substantial. Mr Ban said negotiators were closing on a deal.
"We are having some convergence (of) opinions among the leading countries, both developing and developed, that we will agree on $10 billion short-term fast-track facilities for developing countries over three years until 2012," he said.
Any non-binding political agreement that comes out of Copenhagen will form the basis of a legally binding pact that negotiators hope to finalise next year.
Elsewhere, a US declaration that greenhouse gas emissions are a threat to human health has been welcomed by the European Union and United Nations.
An EU spokesman described the move as displaying "a degree of resolve" on the part of the Americans.
The US Environmental Protection Agency yesterday cleared the way for regulation of greenhouse gases without new laws passed by Congress, reflecting president Barack Obama's commitment to act on climate change .
Rajendra Pachauri, the head of the UN's panel of climate scientists, said it showed what the Obama administration can do.
The EPA ruling that greenhouse gases endanger human health, widely expected after it issued a preliminary finding earlier this year, will allow the agency to regulate planet-warming gases even without legislation in Congress.
The agency could begin to make rules as soon as next year to regulate emissions from cars, power utilities and heavy industry under existing laws.
Mr Obama will still pursue legislation in Congress, which has been slow to act. But the EPA move gave a timely push to the president's aims of securing short-term limits to harmful emissions.
It was expected to inject some optimism into the two-week United Nations meeting in Copenhagen, which Mr Obama is due to attend next week, but was criticised by some US business groups who fear it could push up costs.
"EPA has finalised its endangerment finding on greenhouse gas pollution and is now authorised and obligated to make reasonable efforts to reduce greenhouse pollutants," said Lisa Jackson, the EPA administrator. "This administration will not ignore science or the law any longer."
The Supreme Court ruled in 2007 that the EPA had the right to regulate emissions of the gases under the Clean Air Act. But under the administration of former president George W Bush, the EPA said Congress was the right place to frame action.
Business groups said the EPA announcement would hurt the economy and endanger jobs just as the country emerges from a deep recession.
Legislation by Congress would be more palatable politically for Mr Obama, because it would represent a compromise between business, politicians and other interests rather than through an imposed ruling.
The EPA ruling applies to six gases scientists say contribute to global warming, including the main one, carbon dioxide.
Reuters