Copenhagen talks open; deal is 'within reach'

He also defended the findings by his panel after leaked emails from a British university last month led sceptics to say that researchers had conspired to exaggerate the evidence. He said there were rigorous checks on all research.

“The internal consistency from multiple lines of evidence strongly supports the work of the scientific community, including those individuals singled out in these email exchanges,” he said.

Developing nations urged the rich to lead. Papua New Guinea delegate Kevin Conrad said that some small island states “may soon disappear for ever” without action. African nations said they faced worsening risks of desertification or floods.

Outside the conference centre, delegates walked past a slowly melting ice sculpture of a mermaid, modelled on the Danish fairy tale of “The Little Mermaid”, as a call for action.

Other activists asked delegates arriving at the conference centre, with a large wind turbine nearby, to go through a green gateway marked “Vote Earth” or a red one marked “Global Warming”. They told off anyone choosing red.

The attendance of the leaders and pledges to curb emissions by all the top emitters — led by China, the United States, Russia and India — have raised hopes for an accord after sluggish progress in negotiations over the past two years.

South Africa added new impetus, saying on Sunday it would cut its carbon emissions to 34 percent below expected levels by 2020, if rich countries gave financial and technological help.

World leaders did not attend when environment ministers agreed the Kyoto Protocol in 1997.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, writing in the Guardian newspaper on Monday, said: “The British government is absolutely clear about what we must achieve. Our aim is a comprehensive and global agreement that is then converted to an internationally legally binding treaty in no more than six months.”

He added: “If by the end of next week we have not got an ambitious agreement, it will be an indictment of our generation that our children will not forgive.”

Some 56 newspapers from 45 countries including The Guardian, Le Monde, El Pais and Toronto Star on Monday published a joint editorial urging world leaders to take decisive action.

“Humanity faces a profound emergency. Unless we combine to take decisive action, climate change will ravage our planet,” it said.

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