VALENCIA, Spain – The Earth is hurtling toward a warmer climate at a quickening pace, a Nobel-winning U.N. scientific panel said in a landmark report released Saturday, warning of inevitable human suffering and the threat of extinction for some species.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon said climate change imperils “the most precious treasures of our planet” and called on the United States and China — the world’s two biggest polluters — to do more to fight it.

As early as 2020, 75 million to 250 million people in Africa will suffer water shortages, residents of Asia’s megacities will be at great risk of river and coastal flooding, Europeans can expect extensive species loss, and North Americans will experience longer and hotter heat waves and greater competition for water, the report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says.

The potential impact of global warming is “so severe and so sweeping that only urgent, global action will do,” Ban told the IPCC after it issued its fourth and final report this year.

The IPCC adopted the report, along with a summary, after five days of sometimes tense negotiations. It lays out blueprints for avoiding the worst catastrophes — and various possible outcomes, depending on how quickly and decisively action is taken.

The document says recent research has heightened concern that the poor and the elderly will suffer most from climate change; that hunger and disease will be more common; that droughts, floods and heat waves will afflict the world’s poorest regions; and that more animal and plant species will vanish.

The Summary for Policymakers, and the longer version, called the synthesis report, distill thousands of pages of data and computer models from six years of research compiled by the IPCC.

The information is expected to guide policy makers meeting in Bali, Indonesia, next month to discuss an agreement to succeed the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012.

The panel was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize this year along with former Vice President Al Gore for their efforts to raise awareness about the effects of climate change.

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In another sign that this year is going to be the year of global warming awareness, Al Gore and the IPCC are sharing the 1.5 million dollar Nobel Peace Prize this year. Gore said he was “deeply honored,” adding that “the climate crisis is not a political issue it is a moral and spiritual challenge to all of humanity,” according to a written statement. Gore plans on donating his half of the money to The Alliance for Climate Protection.

Gore and the IPCC have done more to raise awareness about global warming than just about anyone. The IPCC is comprised of thousands of scientists who have worked to solidify a consensus on just how serious global warming is. Gore has done more than perhaps any single person for raising the issue. Together they have somehow managed to wake up a reluctant nation into starting to realize that something is going horribly wrong, and that we are going to need to do something about it.

Gore said he was “deeply honored” to get the prize, and in my opinion he deeply deserves it. “It’s the climate stupid”, that is nothing is a bigger issue than the climate of the earth. Poverty, health care, terrorism, all of these issues become moot if the very climate of the earth shifts to one that is detrimental to survival. This is not to say that all of those issues aren’t important, in fact they are all intricately involved with climate change.

We need a political leader who will realize this and treat them all with the seriousness they warrant. Unfortunately Gore says he will not run for the presidency, even though there is a movement to draft him. Perhaps someone how doesn’t want to be president, would be the best person for the job. I applaud the Nobel committee for bringing further attention to this vital issue, and hope that this will spur further action to halt human caused global warming.