Media coverage of the IPCC report is summarized below:

BBC News: “The report, produced by a team tasked with assessing the science of climate change, was intended to be the definitive summary of climatic shifts facing the world in the coming years. The agency said that it would use stronger language to assess humanity’s influence on climatic change than it had previously done.”

Reuters: “The United Nations panel, which groups 2,500 scientists from more than 130 nations, predicted more droughts, heatwaves, rains and a slow gain in sea levels that could last for more than 1,000 years. … That is a toughening from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) last report in 2001, which judged a link as ‘likely,’ or 66 percent probable.”

Los Angeles Times, about the “likely” description: “Many scientists had argued during the editing process that the report should say it is ‘virtually certain’ that human activities are causing global warming. That would indicate a 99% certainty. But the change was strongly resisted by China, among other nations, because of its reliance on fossil fuels to help build its economy.”

The Associated Press, in a separate reaction piece: “It was a U.S. government scientist who helped push through the strong language in the upcoming international report on global warming. But that doesn’t signal a change in President Bush’s policy about greenhouse gas emissions.”

Grist: “Unless you’ve been living under a rock — if so, way to live simply! — you’ve probably heard a smidgen about the summary of a hefty climate report released to the public today by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In fact, you’ve probably heard the acronym “IPCC” bandied about with some regularity in the past few years. But what exactly is this panel, and why should you care about some report it threw together?”