Representatives from more than 180 nations began crucial talks on the UN Kyoto Protocol on curbing greenhouse gases, a meeting darkened by warnings about climate change from scientists and environmentalists. The 12-day gathering of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change is expected to draw between 8,000 and 10,000 participants from governments, businesses, science and green groups. Its challenge will be to frame the first steps for crafting pledges on greenhouse-gas pollution after the present "commitment period" of the Kyoto Protocol runs out in 2012. Sources close to the meeting expected the United States to take a hard line, pushing ahead with its demands for the gases to tackled by a voluntary approach, rather than by a legal cap, as is the case with Kyoto's present format. The pact commits industrialised nations to making specific cuts in carbon dioxide and five other greenhouse gases that trap solar heat, thus warming the planet's surface and disrupting its delicate climate system. Atmospheric CO2 levels are now at the highest in 650,000 years, scientists say, and 2005 is likely to go into history books as the warmest year on record. The present Kyoto period is only just a tiny first step towards tackling greenhouse gases that have increased dramatically in recent decades as fossil fuels are burned to power economic growth.

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