Scientific American - the Physical Science behind Climate Change

Full 10 page article - download (pdf) by Scientific American August 2007

Great summary of the IPCC recent reports.

KEY CONCEPTS
■ Scientists are confident that humans have interfered with the climate and that further human-induced climate change is on the way.
■ The principal driver of recent climate change is greenhouse gas emissions from human
activities, primarily the burning of fossil fuels.
■ The report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change places the probability that
global warming has been caused by human activities at greater than 90 percent. The previous report, published in 2001, put the probability at higher than 66 percent.
■ Although further changes in the world’s climate are now inevitable, the future, particularly in the longer term, remains largely in our hands—the magnitude of expected change depends on what humans choose to do about greenhouse gas emissions.
—The Editors