The United Nations' Nobel Prize-winning panel on climate change approved the final installment of its landmark report on global warming on Friday, concluding that even the best efforts at reducing CO2 levels will not be enough and that the world must also focus on adapting to "abrupt and irreversible" climate changes. New and stronger evidence developed in the last year also suggests that many of the risks cited in the panel's first three reports earlier this year will actually be larger than projected and will occur at lower temperatures, according to a draft of the so-called synthesis report. The report says that governments will have to spend billions of dollars every year to mitigate the effects of increased temperatures, but even that will not be adequate and many countries will simply have to learn to live with the changes. Failure to act will leave nearly a billion people at risk from water and food shortages, droughts, coastal flooding and severe storms.

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