Global Warming: by 2050 -1 Billion Asians lack water - 600million hungry

The Associated Press recently obtained leaked portions of the draft of an international scientific report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The report "paints a grim picture of life on our planet in the coming decades," reports CNN's Miles O'Brien.

This leaked report is intended as a follow-up to a larger summary report released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change last month. The new report goes into detail about surprising changes to the way we live. It alleges that climate changes are happening faster than earlier predicted.

By the year 2050, one billion Asians will lack water, the small glaciers of Europe will begin disappearing, large glaciers will change "drastically," and ozone-related deaths will rise 4.5 percent in large cities. In 2050, up to six hundred million people will be hungry due to climate changes. Diseases such as Malaria and Dengue Fever "will run rampant." Scientists predict by the year 2080, three billion Asians will lack water and as many as one hundred million people may be affected by rising sea levels.

According to the Associated Press, "some scientists said the overall message is not likely to change when it's issued in early April in Brussels, the same city where European Unon leaders agreed this past week to drastically cut greenhouse gas emissions by 2020."

"The report offers some hope if countries slow and then reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, but it notes that what's happening now isn't encouraging," Seth Borenstein reported for the AP. "'Changes in climate are now affecting physical and biological systems on every continent,'" the report says, in marked contrast to a 2001 report by the same international group that said the effects of global warming were coming. But that report only mentioned scattered regional effects."

TRANSCRIPT:

O'BRIEN: There's a new and stark report on global warming that's out this morning. It paints a grim picture of life on our planet in the coming decades. The report comes from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. It represents 2,000 of the world's leading scientists. It's a more detailed follow-up to that big summary report we told you about early last month. Seth Borenstein of the Associated Press got a hold of a leaked draft copy and it shows things are happening faster than scientists expected. Let's take a look at some of the issues we're talking about.

By 2050, more than 1 billion people in Asia will have a lack of water. By 2080, that number will be 3 billion. That's a stark number indeed.

By 2050, the small glaciers of Europe will begin disappearing. The large glaciers will shrink dramatically. By 2050, in the 2050s, smog in U.S. cities will worsen, ozone related deaths from climate will increase by 4.5 percent.

This is by 2050 as well. Another global warming impact. Between 200 and 600 million people will be hungry because of warming. Diseases like Malaria and Dengue Fever will run rampant. By 2080, 100 million people each year could be flooded by rising seas.

And here's one interesting glimmer of good news, if you will, through all of this. At first, at least, more crops will be grown in areas outside of the tropics where there will be longer growing seasons. Of course, over the long run, that could diminish.

The report written and reviewed by several of the world's leading scientists, up to 1,000 of them involved directly in that report. It's still being edited by officials from the governments. The official report is due out next month. We'll keep you updated.