The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has in many respects underestimated the severity of global warming and the speed at which it strikes. "From 2000 to 2007, greenhouse gas emissions increased far more rapidly than we expected, primarily because developing countries, like China and India, saw a huge surge in electric power generation, almost all of it based on coal", admitted IPCC member Chris Field, of Stanford University and the Carnegie Institution for Science.

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