Newly Leaked IPCC Report Reveals Manmade Climate Change 95 Percent Likely

First Posted: Aug 19, 2013 01:06 PM EDT
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Manmade global climate change may be more certain than ever. Leaked drafts of a major United Nations report indicate that climate scientists are sure that we're altering ecosystems throughout the globe. What is less certain, though, is exactly how our influence will impact specific regions in coming decades.

The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change actually planned to release its 5th climate report in a few weeks. This report details the latest science of climate change and involved thousands of donated hours from scientists around the globe, according to The Guardian. Yet details from the new report have been leaked before the official release.

 So what are these new details? It turns out that it's 95 percent likely that human activities, chiefly the burning of fossil fuels, are the main cause of warming since the 1950s, according to Reuters. That's a huge upset from the report in 2007 which stated that it was 90 percent likely and an even bigger leap from the 2001 report that stated it was 66 percent likely.

The IPCC report is likely to cause a bit of a stir with this announcement, though. Controversy has actually followed the IPCC since 2010. That's when a series of factual errors were discovered in its 2007 report. This eventually led to a media-wide frenzy that lowered the public's opinion of the organization, according to The Wall Street Journal.

So what else can we expect from this new report? It will most likely be very similar to the 2007 report, according to The Guardian. There may be changes when it comes to confidence in certain observations, yet it's likely that we should expect the same kinds of issues that we've seen detailed in the past. Sea level rise, extreme weather events and ice loss will continue to be major factors when it comes to future climate change.

Almost 200 governments have already agreed to try to limit global warming to below 2 degrees Celsius. So far, though, that doesn't look like an achievable goal. Temperatures continue to rise, which means sea levels are expected to follow. Until the new report is released, though, we won't know the exact details of what we might expect in the future.

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