Just in case anyone might have missed it, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has just issued a report (“a comprehensive and rigorous picture of the global present state of knowledge of climate change”) on the causes and consequences of climate change.

From a New York Times article on the report:

Should greenhouse gases continue to accumulate in the atmosphere at even a moderate pace, average temperatures by the end of the century could match those last seen 125,000 years ago, in the previous warm spell between ice ages, the report said.

According to the report,

Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, as is now evident from observations of increases in
global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice, and rising global
mean sea level

Contrast that with the position of the Republican party whose out-going chairman of the Senate Committee on the Environment, Jim Holfe, famously said

I have offered compelling evidence that catastrophic global warming is a hoax.