Global Warming is Happening and Humans are the Primary Cause
The evidence is overwhelming. Record-breaking temperatures, humidity, and sea level rise, along with many other indicators, show that the Earth is warming fast, and that all the heat-trapping emissions we release into the atmosphere from burning fossil fuels is changing our climate.
The time to act is now. But action isn't easy: many powerful industry interests have hindered climate solutions and spread dangerous myths about climate change.
One of the preferred tactics these groups use to sow confusion is to promote studies that either ignore or misrepresent the evidence of thousands of articles published in well-established and well-respected scientific journals, which show that global warming is happening and that it is caused by humans.
No matter how much contrarians try to cloak reality, the evidence is not going away.
Widespread scientific consensus
Scientists worldwide agree that global warming is happening, and that human activity causes it.
The IPCC Fifth Assessment Report (AR5), written by a panel of hundreds of climate experts and scientists from member countries of the World Meteorological Organization the United Nations Environmental Programme, plus a team of external reviewers, states unambiguously:
Human influence on the climate system is clear, and recent anthropogenic emissions of green-house gases are the highest in history. […] Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, and since the 1950s, many of the observed changes are unprecedented over decades to millennia.
Building on two previous studies, a landmark 2013 peer-reviewed study evaluated 10,306 scientists to confirm that over 97 percent climate scientists agree, and over 97 percent of scientific articles find that global warming is real and largely caused by humans.
A 2016 peer-reviewed paper examined existing studies on consensus in climate research, and concluded that the 97 percent estimate is robust.
This level of consensus is equivalent to the level of agreement among scientists that smoking causes cancer – a statement that very few people, if any, contest today.