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On April 13, 2014, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) of the United Nation released its fifth report from Working Group III on mitigating climate change, also called AR5. It called for broad-based action far above what has already been undertaken to stem the damage of human-caused climate change and global warming. The report claimed that the ice caps are melting, sea levels are rising, the global temperature is increasing, freshwater supplies are falling, and many animals are becoming extinct. As these changes occur, they are feeding back into the process, increasing the pace of climate change. Greenhouse emissions from human sources are still rapidly rising, despite multinational efforts to reduce carbon outputs. Mitigation has thus far not been able to stabilize the effects of global warming. The Executive Summary of the Fifth Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Report, Working Group III follows, describing the methods followed to measure the climate changes:

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is a scientific body that represents a hybrid of science and government. Its members strive for maximum reliability in their measurements, but they are keenly aware of the virtual impossibility of reaching that goal. Earth’s climate is simply too vast a system to allow for carefully controlled experiments. Rather than ignore the problem, IPCC workers have designed a compromise system that specifies the degree to which workers in the field are confident of the validity of reported data. A level of scientific understanding (LOSU) designation is applied to assessments of each of the influences on the Earth’s temperature. These radiative forcing factors include the greenhouse gases (GHGs), aerosols, mineral dust, and contrails.