Even though more than a month remains until an official release, Reuters is now reporting on a leaked draft of the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's Fifth Assessment Report. The report, the first in six years by the international body, is considered the definitive scientific take on climate change (although it is sometimes faulted for being too conservative, and quickly becomes out of date).
Previous IPCC reports have made news for a variety of reasons. The 2001 report, for instance, declared it "likely" (e.g., a 66 percent probability; explanation here) that most of the observed warming that the planet has seen is caused by humans. The 2007 report upped that assessment to "very likely" (a 90 percent probability); and now, according to Reuters, scientists are giving us a 95 percent confidence in this central conclusion of modern climate research. That appears to be the chief headline that will be emerging from the IPCC this time around.
