on february 2, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (ipcc) released its much awaited Fourth Assessment Report. With an unprecedented confidence of 90 per cent, it asserted that climate change is result of human activities. The panel's 2001 Third Assessment Report had put the probability of climate change resulting from human activities at 66 per cent.

"The high confidence levels of ipcc in this report can be attributed to continuous refinement of climate prediction models and availability of more datasets,' says Rashik Ravindra of the National Centre for Antarctic and Ocean Research, Goa.

While the third report relied upon nine climate models, the fourth used 23, considerably reducing the margin of errors."We have eliminated possibilities of warming due to natural factors like sun spots almost completely, through the use of these improved models and, after that, have come to the conclusion that most of the warming is human made,' says ipcc chairperson R K Pachauri.
Nature of change "We are prepared only for 2