The report's startling numbers are based on calculations by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that the Earth's atmosphere warmed by 0.74 degrees Celsius (1.33 degrees Fahrenheit) from 1906 to 2005, with much of that increase coming in recent decades.

CNN: Report: Climate change crisis 'catastrophic'

"Six Degrees", by leading environmental campaigner Mark Lynas, sounds a red alert for the health of the planet, charting degree-by-degree the likely consequences of rising temperatures up to the worst-case scenario 5.8 degrees Celsius (10 degrees Fahrenheit) rise envisaged by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's 2001 report.

CNN: Six degrees of devastation

He said recent reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which has estimated the possible global temperature rise by 2100 as 5.8 degrees C, had confirmed a "spectacular" retreat and collapse of ice shelves on the Antarctic peninsula.

BBC: Ice surprise for sailor

By contrast, human-induced climate change is thought to have raised global temperatures just 0.6 degrees Celsius during the past 150 years.

CNN: Past may hold clues to climate's future

According to research by Ann Berrington, at the ESRC Centre for Population Change at the University of Southampton, young people with degrees are much more likely to live with their parents.

ECONOMIST: Young adults have become reluctant to fly the family nest