It would be cheaper and more effective for the world to adapt to global warming rather than fight it, scientists said yesterday.

The scientists - including Mike Hulme, the founding director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of East Anglia - accept the consensus on the causes and effects of climate change, but differ on what to do about it.

Their view, which has caused them to be labelled "the new pariahs of global warming", is that the world should work to reduce hunger, storm damage and disease, rather than spending trillions of pounds trying to stabilise carbon dioxide levels.

Roger Pielke Jr, an environmental policy expert at the University of Colorado at Boulder, told the journal Natural Hazards Review: "Everything has been put on the back of carbon dioxide, and carbon dioxide cannot carry that weight. I would characterise us as realists. Realists on what is politically possible."

But many scientists believe downplaying the importance of emissions reductions is dangerous.

Stephen Schneider, a climatologist at Stanford University, said: "You can't adapt to melting the Greenland ice sheet. You can't adapt to species that have gone extinct."