The internationally influential Stern report on climate change underestimated the risks of global warming and should have presented an even bleaker view of the future, according to its own author.

"We underestimated the risks . . . we underestimated the damage associated with the temperature increases . . . and we underestimated the probabilities of temperature increases," said Sir Nicholas Stern.

A recent essay says the most pressing current scientific and political challenge is to avoid what is known as “dangerous” global warming – the point where world temperatures become irreversible.

As there’s a 25-to-30-year lag between greenhouse emissions and the full impact of their warming, current climate chaos is a result of carbon spewed in the late 1970s. The hit from more recent discharges – including China’s coal plants -- is but pain yet to come.

So we’re dangerously close already.

British economists have urged India to battle climate change, saying vulnerability to the phenomenon goes hand in hand with poverty . Dimitri Zenghelis, lead author of the Stern Review, which examined the costs and benefits of climate change moderation, said there is 90 per cent recognition of climate change in the developed world compared with only 50 per cent by developing countries.

The board of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the nation’s leading general science organization, has issued a statement declaring global warming “a growing threat to society.” The first-ever stand by the AAAS, which publishes the journal Science, also attributes recent warming to human activity.