U.N. report warns warming will harm timber industry

WASHINGTON — Climate change will exact a major cost on North America's timber industry and could drive as much as 40 percent of its plant and animal species extinct in a matter of decades, according to a new report from an international panel.

The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which released its summary report on global warming's overall impact earlier this month, provided a more detailed assessment Monday of the effects on North America. The report, written and edited by dozens of scientists, looks at how global warming has begun to transform the continent and how it will likely affect it in the future.

The 67-page report, which examines everything from freshwater ecosystems to tourism, said North America has suffered severe environmental and economic damage because of extreme weather events including hurricanes, heat waves and forest fires. Without "increased investments in countermeasures," the authors wrote that they are at least 90 percent sure that "hot temperatures and extreme weather are likely to cause increased adverse health impacts from heat-related mortality, pollution, storm-related fatalities and injuries, and infectious diseases."

Kristi Ebi, a public-health and global-warming consultant who worked on a different chapter of the IPCC report, said at a news conference that "human health is already being affected by climate change, and the impacts will only increase."

North American forests also will suffer from a warming climate, the report states, and increases in wildfires, insect infestations and disease could cost wood and timber producers $1 billion to $2 billion by the end of the century.

The report also suggests that skiing and snowmobiling will suffer. The $27 billion snowmobiling industry is especially vulnerable because it is dependent on natural snowfall.

By midcentury, the authors write, "a reliable snowmobile season disappears from most regions of eastern North America that currently have developed trail networks."