Global warming mostly man-made, says UN panel

GlobalPost

A United Nations-sponsored science panel on Friday laid the blame for most climate change on... well, us.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) on Friday issued a summary of their forthcoming report on global warming in which they claim the phenomenon is largely man-made.

From page 12:

"It is extremely likely that human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century."

And by "extremely likely," they mean 95 percent likely, according to Reuters.

Sea levels are expected to rise by 10-32 inches and global average temperatures set to increase by 0.5-8.6 degrees F by the century's end, said the Associated Press, citing the report.

The last IPCC study, released in 2007, was extremely controversial, with critics characterizing some conclusions as politically motivated. 

Other skeptics have pointed to evidence of a decline in warming over the past 15 years, a subject of which the latest report's summary makes little mention, said the AP.

UN climate change official Christiana Figueres responded to the IPCC findings by calling on nations to work together.

"To steer humanity out of the high danger zone, governments must step up immediate climate action and craft an agreement in 2015 that helps to scale up and speed up the global response," she said, according to Reuters.

Samantha Smith of the World Wildlife Fund told the AP that the new report has "few surprises," saying it "just validates what we are seeing happening around us."

Read the report summary in full here.

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