Some remain sceptical about the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the credibility of its findings. But despite this pressure, which has mounted owing to the so-called warming hiatus, its Fifth Assessment report, published in late September, is unequivocal. The report states that human influence on the climate system is clear and that it is ‘extremely likely’ that this influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-twentieth century. In the IPCC’s parlance of the words ‘extremely likely’ translates to a 95% to 100% assessed likelihood of an outcome or a result.