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WASHINGTON — The Bush administration on Friday firmly acknowledged a scientific study showing that human activity adds to global warming, reversing the administration's previous hesitation to acknowledge such a link.

Despite the warning, the Bush administration expressed continued opposition Friday to mandatory reductions in heat-trapping "greenhouse" gases.

Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman warned against "unintended consequences" — including job losses — that he said might result if the government requires economy-wide caps on carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels.

"There is a concern within this administration that the imposition of a carbon cap in this country would — may — lead to the transfer of jobs and industry abroad (to nations) that do not have such a carbon cap."

President Bush used the same economic reasoning when he rejected the Kyoto Protocol in 2001, an international treaty requiring 35 industrial nations to cut their global-warming gases by 5 percent on average below 1990 levels by 2012. The White House has said the treaty would have cost 5 million U.S. jobs.

"Even if we were successful in accomplishing some kind of debate and discussion about what caps might be here in the United States, we are a small contributor to the overall, when you look at the rest of the world. And so it's really got to be a global solution," Bodman said.

The U.S., with 4 percent of the global population, currently contributes a 25 percent of global carbon emissions

The study, the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, concluded with 90 percent certainty that human activities since 1750 have warmed the planet, largely through carbon emissions.

The study, released in Paris, was the culmination of a six-year project involving over 2,500 scientists from over 130 countries.

Bodman later told a news conference that the report was "sound science. As … this report makes clear, human activity is attributing to changes in our Earth's climate, and that issue is no longer up for debate."

Separately, David Hamilton, director of global warming and energy programs for the Sierra Club, said, "The Bush administration's conceding that the findings are true is embarrassingly late."

The IPCC also warned of rising temperatures in coming decades, as well as rising sea levels caused by melting ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica.

Public statements by Bush and other administration officials over the years have been couched in skeptical terms about whether global warming actually was occurring. More recently, the administration has agreed that global warming was real but questioned whether human activity was causing it.

Administration officials often claimed there were "scientific uncertainties" about such a connection.

Earlier this week, House committee hearings chaired by Rep. Henry A. Waxman, D-Calif., revealed what he said was "an orchestrated effort to mislead the public about the threat of global climate change" on the part of the Bush administration.