Sep 30, 2013 02:50 PM EDT By Russell Westerholm, UniversityHerald Reporter

Global warming is a real problem and, with humans found by the United Nations to be the problem, scientists say the most recent report should be a "wake-up call," ABC News reported.

The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, published Friday, stated: "It is extremely likely that human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century."

The current report, the IPCC's Fifth Assessment, confirmed what many scientists already speculated. 2007's Fourth Assessment and recent discoveries have suggested it was "highly likely" that humans were the main cause of global warming.

"This report confirms with even more certainty than in the past -- that it is extremely likely that the changes in our climate system for the past half a century are due to human influence," Michel Jarraud, Secretary General of the World Meteorological Organization, which co-sponsored the IPCC, said in a statement. "It should serve as yet another wake-up call that our activities today will have a profound impact on society not only for us but for many generations to come."

The IPCC report is a massive collection of data from scientists and researchers all around the world. The report includes more than 800 authors from 40-plus countries contributed to the 2,500-page paper. The contents of the report contain numerical data and climate simulations from millions of sources.

The new report has seemingly put an end to suggesting humans have had an influence on global warming and now asserts that observation. On the severity of climate change already taking place in the Earth's atmosphere, the report state: "Warming in the climate system is unequivocal."

Still, much the Fourth Assessment, the latest report has been met with criticism from those who deny the severity of global warming or even that it exists. 2007's report was criticized for containing incorrect statements on Himalayan glaciers and natural disasters.

Other critics say the report takes so much time to put together that by the time it is released, some of its info has become outdated by new research. Critics also may use the series of flaws in the 2007 report to discredit the current one, saying the process of putting it together is fundamentally flawed.

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