U.N. panel: 'Urgent' action needed on global warming

(CNN) -- Climate change is real and is happening at an ever faster pace, a United Nations scientific panel said in a hard-hitting report issued Saturday on tackling global warming.

Exposed mud banks at a reservoir in Spain, November 2007.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was delivering its fourth and final report on the science of climate change and the impact of human-produced greenhouse gases at a conference in Valencia, Spain.

The report produced by the Nobel prize-winning panel warns of the devastating impact for developing countries and the threat of species extinction posed by the climate crisis.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, presenting the report, warned that some of the effects of rising levels of greenhouse gases may already be irreversible.

The U.N. head said the situation was already "so severe and so sweeping that only urgent, global action" could head off the crisis.

He told the panel he was hopeful that the report's findings could help bring about "a real breakthrough" in climate change negotiations in Bali, Indonesia, next month.

The Bali talks will set the groundwork for the successor to the Kyoto treaty, which expires in 2012.

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