global warming fact or fiction essay outline

Global Warming: Fact or Fiction

This essay will examine the debate surrounding global warming. It will assess the scientific evidence supporting global warming, counter-arguments, and the implications of this debate for policy and public perception. Moreover, at PapersOwl, there are additional free essay samples connected to Fiction.

How it works

• 1 Introduction:
• 2 Side One of the Issue:
• 3 Side Two of the Issue:
• 4 Conclusion:
• 5 Reflection:
• 6 References

Introduction:

Global Warming is the theory that the atmosphere of the earth is gradually increasing as a result of the increase in levels of greenhouse gases and pollutants being released. Since the Industrial Revolution, Earth’s global average temperature has increased by 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit (The World Counts, 2014). There are generally two opinions regarding the argument of global warming: those who believe it is occurring and those who do not. People who believe in the issue back their opinions up using scientific evidence, while those who deny the issue generally do because they do not believe in science, they claim there is no solid evidence, or that the cause of the change in Earth’s temperature has no known cause (Why Do Some People Think Climate Change is a Hoax?, 2017)

Side One of the Issue:

The first source was an article titled, Climate change evidence: How do we know?.

This article was posted by NASA, which is a huge organization full of experts on outer space, making them very credible. The article is quite recent, as it was published in April of 2018. This means that the content found within the article is updated with the most recent information, data, and statistics. The purpose of the article is to inform the public of proof that climate change is indeed occurring. The article is factual and full of evidence proving the author’s point. The author is impartial because he/she is not proving any personal opinions, but facts and data. This source is incredibly useful because it contains the numbers needed for not only scientists, but anyone in need of the information. The information of the article has been reviewed by the NASA team. The source is incredibly reliable considering where it comes from, and its lack of personal opinion. The content has not been swayed based on any religious beliefs, political affiliations, etc. A limitation of the source is since NASA believes in global warming, they will only provide evidence that supports the theory.

The second source supporting the theory of climate change is, Global Warming by the Union of Concerned Scientists. This source comes from an organization of scientists who want to stop human influence on global warming. The publishing date is not given, as this is not a specific article, but the website of the organization. The purpose of the website is to inform readers of the causes and impact of global climate change. It also gives readers evidence of how global warming has affected specific areas of the U.S. The authors want to provide possible solutions to global warming, specifically what regular people can do to help out. The information is factual and appears to be very well researched, as other sources have the same facts. The information has clearly been reviewed by the organization. The information is objective because they are solely facts, making the source reliable. The source is not biased and does not appear to be altered by personal beliefs. A limitation to the site is a lack of references, however, as said previously, other sources have the same information.

Side Two of the Issue:

The first source that denies the theory of climate change is Top Ten Reasons Climate Change is a Hoax . The source comes from The News-Review and was published in April of 2018. The author does not have any listed credentials, making their credibility questionable. The purpose of the article was to try and argue that the idea of climate change is about money. The information is objective, and although the author used data, they only used data that proved their own point. The entire article is an opinion and is found in the opinion section of the website. This source is useless because none of the information is relevant or accurate. The source has probably not been reviewed considered that this is one person’s own personal opinion. The article is completely unreliable, and the author tries to argue that 30,000 scientists are either lying, or are unintelligent. The information has been swayed by political opinion because their only argument against climate change is that the idea was evoked from a disagreement about money. The author also felt the need to state the political party of the people he/she was disagreeing with, which only diminishes their credibility because it shows the argument they are trying to make is based not off of facts and evidence, but on political affiliations.

The final source that does not support climate change is, Catastrophic man-made global warming”” is a complete hoax. The source comes from a member of GlobalClimateScam by the name of ElmerB. The article was published in January 2015. The author does not have any credentials, considering that they are a random user on the site. The purpose of the information is to argue that global warming is fake. The author attempts to use evidence, however, the evidence is false. The author claims that polar bears are thriving, however, their habitat is melting, and their number are decreasing. The source is subjective and the author is using their own opinions to sway readers. The source is not useful because some of their evidence is false, making it obvious that the article was not reviewed. Much of the evidence they used is taken out of context, or they twisted facts/data in a way that made their opinion appear to be correct.

Conclusion:

The sources supporting the theory of global warming appear to be more credible than those who attempt to debunk it. This is because of the origin of the sources, the information being correct as well as recent/updated, and the plethora of certifications given to the authors. On the other hand, the sources for the global warming deniers completely lacked any credibility. The authors, like ElmerB, were random users on lesser-known sites, posting in the opinion section. Their facts were inaccurate, such as the claim that polar bears are thriving, while the author of the first article tried to accuse thousands of experts on global warming of either being uneducated or lying.

Reflection:

A benefit to my conclusion is an overall summary of the credibility of both sides to the question of whether or not humans are speeding up global warming. Based on the sources, readers are given insight into what kind of evidence both sides are using to support their argument. Specifically, readers of the sources who are trying to decide a position to support when considering human involvement in climate change should be able to see that the sources and evidence that argue humans are, in fact, speeding up global warming are much more credible than those that deny it. One major limitation to this research is the fact that only four sources could be used in total to decide whether an entire side of an argument is valid or not. More sources are needed in order to evaluate the credibility of both sides to such a large controversy in science.

Climate change evidence: How do we know? (2018, April 04). Retrieved May 16, 2018, from https://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/

E. (2015, January 23). Top Ten Reasons Climate Change is a Hoax. Retrieved May 16, 2018, from http://www.globalclimatescam.com/opinion/top-ten-reasons-climate-change-is-a-hoax/

Global Warming. (n.d.). Retrieved May 16, 2018, from https://www.ucsusa.org/global-warming

Nikirk, J. (2018, April 17). “”Catastrophic man-made global warming”” is a complete hoax. Retrieved May 16, 2018, from http://www.nrtoday.com/opinion/letters/catastrophic-man-made-global-warming-is-a-complete-hoax/article_ff895c54-2ba1-55d7-9b81 0520235bc043.html

Temperature Change Over the Last 100 Years. (2014, October 21). Retrieved May 16, 2018, from http://www.theworldcounts.com/stories/Temperature-Change-Over-the-Last-100Years

Why Do Some People Think Climate Change is a Hoax? (2017, November 24). Retrieved May 16, 2018, from https://www.bestvalueschools.com/faq/why-do-some-people-think-climate-change-is-a-hoax/

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Debunking eight common myths about climate change

The world is warming at a  record pace , with unseasonable heat baking nearly every continent on Earth. April, the last month for which statistics are available, marked the 11th consecutive month the planet has set a new temperature high.

Experts say that is a clear sign the Earth’s climate is rapidly changing. But many believe – or at least say they believe – that  climate change  is not real, relying on a series of well-trodden myths to make their point. 

“Most of the world rightly acknowledges that climate change is real,” says Dechen Tsering, Acting Director of the Climate Change Division at the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). “But in many places, misinformation is delaying the action that is so vital to countering what is one of the greatest challenges facing humanity.” 

This month, delegates will be meeting in Bonn, Germany for a key conference on climate change. Ahead of that gathering, here is a closer look at eight common climate-related myths and why they are simply not true. 

Myth #1: Climate change has always happened, so we should not worry about it. 

It is true that the planet’s temperature has long fluctuated, with periods of warming and cooling. But since the last ice age 10,000 years ago, the climate has been relatively stable, which scientists say has been crucial to the development of human civilization. 

That stability is now faltering. The Earth is heating up at its fastest rate in at least 2,000 years and is about 1.2°C hotter than it was in pre-industrial times. The last 10 years have been the warmest on record, with 2023 smashing global temperature records.   

Other key climate-related indicators are also spiking. Ocean temperatures , sea levels and  atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gasses are rising at record rates while sea ice and glaciers are retreating at alarming speeds. 

Myth #2: Climate change is a natural process. It has nothing to do with people. 

While climate change is a natural process human activity is pushing it into overdrive. A landmark report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which draws on the research of hundreds of leading climate scientists, found that humans are responsible for almost all the global warming over the past 200 years.  

The vast majority of warming has come from the burning of coal, oil and gas. The combustion of these fossil fuels is flooding the atmosphere with greenhouse gases, which act like a blanket around the planet, trapping heat.  

By measuring everything from ice cores to tree rings, scientists have been able to track concentrations of greenhouse gases. Carbon dioxide levels are at their highest in 2 million years , while two other greenhouse gases, methane and nitrous oxide, are at their highest in 800,000 years .  

Myth #3: A couple of degrees of warming is not that big of a deal. 

Actually, small temperature rises can throw the world’s delicate ecosystems into disarray, with dire implications for humans and other living things. The Paris Agreement on climate change aims to limit average global temperature rise to “well below” 2°C, and preferably to 1.5°C, since pre-industrial times.  

Even that half-a-degree swing could make a massive difference. The IPCC found that at 2°C of warming, more than 2 billion people would regularly be exposed to extreme heat than they would at 1.5°C. The world would also lose twice as many plants and vertebrate species and three times as many insects. In some areas, crop yields would decrease by more than half, threatening food security. 

At 1.5°C of warming, 70 per cent to 90 per cent of corals, the pillars of many undersea ecosystems, would die. At 2°C of warming, some 99 per cent would perish. Their disappearance would likely lead to the loss of other marine species, many of which are a critical source of protein for coastal communities. 

“Every fraction of a degree of warming matters,” says Tsering. 

Myth #4: An increase in cold snaps shows climate change is not real. 

This statement confuses weather and climate, which are two different things. Weather is the day-to-day atmospheric conditions in a location and climate is the long-term weather conditions in a region. So, there could still be a cold snap while the general trend for the planet is warming.  

Some experts also believe climate change could lead to longer and more intense cold in some places due to changes in wind patterns and other atmospheric factors. One much-publicized paper found the rapid warming of the Arctic may have disrupted the swirling mass of cold air above the North Pole in 2021. This unleashed sub-zero temperatures as far south as Texas in the United States, causing billions of dollars in damages. 

Myth #5: Scientists disagree on the cause of climate change. 

A 2021 study revealed that 99 per cent of peer-reviewed scientific literature found that climate change was human-induced. That was in line with a widely read study from 2013 , which found 97 per cent of peer-reviewed papers that examined the causes of climate change said it was human-caused. 

“The idea that there is no consensus is used by climate deniers to muddy the waters and sow the seeds of doubt,” says Tsering. “But the scientific community agrees: the global warming we are facing is not natural. It is caused by humans.” 

Myth #6: It is too late to avert a climate catastrophe, so we might as well keep burning fossil fuels. 

While the situation is dire, there is still a narrow window for humanity to avoid the worst of climate change.  

UNEP’s latest Emissions Gap Report found that cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 42 per cent by 2030, the world could limit global temperature rise to 1.5°C compared with pre-industrial levels.  

A little math reveals that to reach that target, the world must reduce its annual emissions by 22 billion tonnes of carbon-dioxide equivalent in less than seven years. That might seem like a lot. But by ramping up financing and focusing on low-carbon development in key transport , agriculture and forestry, the world can get there.  

“There is no question the task ahead of us is massive,” Tsering says. “But we have the solutions we need to reduce emissions today and there is an opportunity to raise ambition in the new round of national climate action plans.”  

Myth #7: Climate models are unreliable. 

Climate skeptics have long argued that the computer models used to project climate change are unreliable at best and completely inaccurate at worst. 

But the IPCC, the world’s leading scientific authority on climate change, says that over decades of development, these models have consistently provided “a robust and unambiguous picture” of planetary warming.  

Meanwhile, a 2020 study by the University of California showed that global warming models were largely accurate. The study looked at 17 models that were generated between 1970 and 2007 and found 14 of them closely matched observations.  

Myth #8: We do not need to worry about lowering greenhouse gas emissions. Humanity is inventive; we can just adapt to climate change. 

Some countries and communities can adapt to rising temperatures, lower precipitation and the other impacts of climate change. But many cannot.  

The world’s developing countries collectively need between US$215 billion and US$387 billion per year to adapt to climate change, yet only have access to a fraction of that total, found UNEP’s latest Adaptation Gap Report . Even wealthy nations will struggle to afford the cost of adaptation, which in some cases will require radical measures, such as displacing vulnerable communities, relocating vital infrastructure or changing staple foods.  

In many places, people are already facing hard limits on how much they can adapt. Small island developing states , for example, can only do so much to hold back the rising seas that threaten their existence. 

Without significant action to lower greenhouse gas emissions, communities will reach these hard limits faster and begin to suffer irreparable damage from climate change, say experts.   

The Sectoral Solution to the climate crisis  

UNEP is at the forefront of supporting the Paris Agreement goal of keeping global temperature rise well below 2°C, and aiming for 1.5°C, compared to pre-industrial levels. To do this, UNEP has developed the Sectoral Solution, a roadmap to reducing emissions across sectors in line with the Paris Agreement commitments and in pursuit of climate stability. The six sectors identified are: energy; industry; agriculture and food; forests and land use; transport; and buildings and cities. 

Further Resources

• UNEP’s work on climate change
• The Sectoral Solution to Climate Change
• Adaptation Gap Report 2023
• Emissions Gap Report 2023

Related Content

Related Sustainable Development Goals

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April 8, 2009

Is Global Warming a Myth?

How to respond to people who doubt the human impact on the climate

Dear EarthTalk: I keep meeting people who say that human-induced global warming is only theory, that just as many scientists doubt it as believe it. Can you settle the score? -- J. Proctor, London, UK

So-called “global warming skeptics” are indeed getting more vocal than ever, and banding together to show their solidarity against the scientific consensus that has concluded that global warming is caused by emissions from human activities.

Upwards of 800 skeptics (most of whom are not scientists) took part in the second annual International Conference on Climate Change—sponsored by the Heartland Institute, a conservative think tank—in March 2009. Keynote speaker and Massachusetts Institute of Technology meteorologist Richard Lindzen told the gathering that “there is no substantive basis for predictions of sizeable global warming due to observed increases in minor greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, methane and chlorofluorocarbons.”

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Most skeptics attribute global warming—few if any doubt any longer that the warming itself is occurring, given the worldwide rise in surface temperature—to natural cycles, not emissions from power plants, automobiles and other human activity. “The observational evidence…suggests that any warming from the growth of greenhouse gases is likely to be minor, difficult to detect above the natural fluctuations of the climate, and therefore inconsequential,” says atmospheric physicist Fred Singer, an outspoken global warming skeptic and founder of the advocacy-oriented Science and Environmental Policy Project.

But green leaders maintain that even if some warming is consistent with millennial cycles, something is triggering the current change. According to the nonprofit Environmental Defense, some possible (natural) explanations include increased output from the sun, increased absorption of the sun’s heat due to a change in the Earth’s reflectivity, or a change in the internal climate system that transfers heat to the atmosphere.

But scientists have not been able to validate any such reasons for the current warming trend, despite exhaustive efforts. And a raft of recent peer reviewed studies—many which take advantage of new satellite data—back up the claim that it is emissions from tailpipes, smokestacks (and now factory farmed food animals, which release methane) that are causing potentially irreparable damage to the environment.

To wit, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences declared in 2005 that “greenhouse gases are accumulating in Earth’s atmosphere as a result of human activities, causing surface air temperatures and subsurface ocean temperatures to rise,” adding that “the scientific understanding of climate change is now sufficiently clear to justify nations taking prompt action.” Other leading U.S. scientific bodies, including the American Meteorological Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Geophysical Union have issued concurring statements—placing the blame squarely on humans’ shoulders.

Also, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a group of 600 leading climate scientists from 40 nations, says it is “very likely” (more than a 90 percent chance) that humans are causing a global temperature change that will reach between 3.2 and 7.2 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of this century.

CONTACTS : Heartland Institute, www.heartland.org ; Science and Environmental Policy Project, www.sepp.org ; U.S. National Academy of Sciences, www.nas.edu; IPCC , www.ipcc.ch.

EarthTalk is produced by E/The Environmental Magazine. SEND YOUR ENVIRONMENTAL QUESTIONS TO: EarthTalk , P.O. Box 5098, Westport, CT 06881; [email protected] . Read past columns at: www.emagazine.com/earthtalk/archives.php . EarthTalk is now a book! Details and order information at: www.emagazine.com/earthtalkbook .

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10 myths about climate change

With the climate crisis becoming a hot topic in mainstream media - there's a lot of confusion around what climate change actually is and what's causing it. That's why we've tried to clear up some of the most frequently heard myths, so that you can tell fiction from fact!

Myth 1. The Earth’s climate has always changed  

Over the course of Earth’s 4.5-billion-year history, the climate has changed a lot, this is true. However, the rapid warming we’re seeing now can't be explained by natural cycles of warming and cooling. The kind of changes that would normally happen over hundreds of thousands of years are happening in decades. 

Global temperatures are now at their highest since records began. In fact, the 10 warmest years on Earth, since 1880, have occurred since 2014. [1]       

So, when people talk about climate change today, they mean anthropogenic (human-made) climate change. This is the warming of Earth’s average temperature as a result of human activity, such as burning coal, oil and gas to produce energy to fuel our homes and transport, and cutting down trees to produce the food we eat. You can read more about it here: How do we know climate change is real?

Myth 2. Global warming isn't real as it's still cold

Global warming is causing the Earth’s average surface temperature to rise which, in turn, is causing changes in our natural climate systems. These changes are making all sorts of extreme weather events more likely and more severe, including more intense droughts, heatwaves and hurricanes but also, strangely, an increased potential for more severe cold weather events    

There is also an important distinction between weather and climate. Weather refers to short-term changes in the Earth’s atmosphere and represents things such as temperature, rain and cloudiness. Climate refers to longer-term changes in the Earth’s atmosphere over extended periods of time. Short-term changes in the weather will continue and that is why we can still experience cold snaps, despite the fact that the Earth’s temperature is warming. On top of this, we will keep on experiencing natural seasonal variations as the Earth orbits around the sun, so winter will continue to feel cooler than summer, even though the overall temperature is higher than it was 100 years ago.

Due to where we are in the world, the UK and Ireland are likely to get more wind and rain as a result of climate change, while New York could see more snow. The complex interaction between factors in the Earth’s climate makes extreme weather events, both hot and cold, more unpredictable and impactful.

Myth 3. Heatwaves and wildfires have nothing to do with climate change 

Climate change makes extreme weather more frequent and intense, including heatwaves, wildfires and floods.

The evidence shows that extreme heatwaves have increased since the 1950s and human-induced climate change is the main driver; with every additional increment of global warming, these extremes continue to increase.

Because climate change creates warmer and drier conditions, even if a wildfire is started as a result of human activity, there is more fuel available when vegetation is very dry, and the relative humidity of the air will be lower, allowing fires to spread further and faster. In addition, the global wildfire season is getting longer, due to higher temperatures and longer droughts.

Wildfires can pose an immediate threat to the lives of people and animals in the area, as well as causing damage to soil, vegetation and whole ecosystems. Smoke and ash from wildfires pollute air, water and land.

Myth 4. China is mostly responsible for climate change 

Human-induced climate change is something that has been happening for many years and Western countries, like the UK, have played a big role in contributing to carbon emissions over the past 200 years. This means that only looking at who the biggest emitters of greenhouse gases are today is an oversimplification of a very nuanced topic.   

A lot of the products we purchase in the UK are manufactured in China, meaning that we are essentially transferring a large portion of our emissions to the countries responsible for creating the products we use. Part of the reason emissions from highly industrialised countries are so high is because of the high demand for products created by them, from countries such as the UK.

Despite being one of the largest emitters of greenhouse gases today, in part because it’s such a big country, China’s emissions per person are less than other countries like the United States. 

China is also currently investing heavily in renewable energy. The increase in investment has been in response to the rapid growth of green business, the demand for renewable energy and the need to clean up air pollution in its major cities.  

Climate change is a global issue, and we all have a responsibility to step up to tackle the climate crisis. The problem will not be solved unless all countries put in as much effort as they can and work together. Action on climate change will need serious investment but has the potential to deliver huge benefits for nature and people. We all need to raise our voices and fight for our world!

Myth 5. Plants need carbon dioxide 

Plants do need carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) to live. Plants and forests remove and store away huge amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere each year. The problem is, there’s only so much carbon dioxide they can absorb and this amount is getting less, as more and more forests are cut down across the world, largely to produce our food.  

Let’s be clear, CO 2 itself does not cause problems. It's part of the natural global ecosystem. The problem is the quantity of CO 2 that’s being produced by us as humans; there hasn’t been this level of CO 2 in the atmosphere for thee million years. [2]  

Myth 6. Animals will adapt to climate change

This one isn't a complete myth; Darwin got the adaptation part right. However, let’s be clear, some plants and animals will adapt but not all.

To survive, plants, animals and birds confronted with climate change have two options: move or adapt. There are several examples of species that have begun to adapt to climate change already.

But increasingly, it's a different story for many. Given the speed of climate change, it’s becoming impossible for many species to adapt quickly enough to keep up with their changing environment. As habitats are destroyed by roads, cities and dams, moving becomes increasingly difficult. For those that can’t move or adapt, the future doesn’t look so positive.

Myth 7. Polar bear numbers are increasing 

This isn’t the case. Climate change is the biggest threat faced by polar bears. The Arctic is warming roughly four times faster than the rest of the world, causing sea ice to melt earlier and form later each year. This makes it more difficult for female polar bears to get onto land in late autumn to build their dens and more difficult for them to get out onto the sea ice in the spring to feed their cubs. Their main source of prey, seals, are also affected by climate change, as they depend on sea ice to raise their young.  

This means that in some parts of the Arctic, polar bears are having to survive with less food than they did previously. Polar bear populations are predicted to decline by 30% by the middle of this century.

Myth 8. Renewable energy is more expensive 

The  belief that renewable energy is expensive, simply isn’t true! Solar power and wind are the cheapest ways of generating electricity, meaning that the energy they produce is cheaper than nuclear, gas and other fossil fuels. Some estimates show that renewable energy can be up to nine times cheaper than gas! The   cost of renewables has fallen faster than anyone could have predicted, yet the UK Government are still backing dirty fossil fuels. [3]  

Right now, people are facing a huge rise in the price of energy and food. The main drivers of this include the price of fossil fuels, while crops around the world are also failing in the wake of droughts and floods caused by climate change. Tackling climate change and fixing the cost-of-living crisis go hand-in-hand. Both challenges have the same root cause – a reliance on expensive and polluting fossil fuels – meaning that both challenges have the same solution.    

Myth 9. Renewable energy can only work when it's not cloudy or windy 

The energy industry   is developing new methods for storing electricity and managing demand at peak times, meaning that even if the sun isn't shining or it’s not blowing a gale, it’s still possible to rely on renewable energy sources.

The majority of UK homes get their electricity from the National Grid. When you switch to a clean supplier, they guarantee that for every unit of electricity you take out of the grid, they’ll put the same amount of clean energy back in, helping to clean up our energy supply. 

Myth 10. Climate change is a future problem

There is no longer an excuse for inaction on climate change as it pushes the burden of addressing the climate crisis onto future generations.

We’re already seeing the devastating effects of climate change on global food supplies, migration, conflict, disease and global instability, which will only get worse if we don’t act now. Human-made climate change is the biggest crisis of our time. It threatens the future of the planet that we depend on for our survival and we're the last generation that can do something about it.

In 2015, 196 countries signed the Paris Agreement, uniting in the shared objective of halting global warming to 1.5°C (when compared to how hot the world was before the Industrial Revolution). To help with this, the UK is striving to reduce its carbon emissions by 68% by 2030 and is aiming to achieve net zero emissions by 2050. Therefore, in order for us to successfully achieve this goal, we need to act now.

Climate change is the greatest environmental challenge the world has ever faced, but we have the solutions and we know nature can fight back. We need people all over the world to take action and join the fight for our world

[1] Global Temperature: Vital Signs – Climate Change: Vital Signs of the Planet (nasa.gov) 

[2] Climate Change: Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide: NOAA Climate.gov 

[3] Analysis: Record-low price for UK offshore wind is nine times cheaper than gas - Carbon Brief

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The Science of Climate Change Explained: Facts, Evidence and Proof

Definitive answers to the big questions.

Credit... Photo Illustration by Andrea D'Aquino

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By Julia Rosen

Ms. Rosen is a journalist with a Ph.D. in geology. Her research involved studying ice cores from Greenland and Antarctica to understand past climate changes.

• Published April 19, 2021 Updated Nov. 6, 2021

The science of climate change is more solid and widely agreed upon than you might think. But the scope of the topic, as well as rampant disinformation, can make it hard to separate fact from fiction. Here, we’ve done our best to present you with not only the most accurate scientific information, but also an explanation of how we know it.

How do we know climate change is really happening?

• How much agreement is there among scientists about climate change?
• Do we really only have 150 years of climate data? How is that enough to tell us about centuries of change?
• How do we know climate change is caused by humans?
• Since greenhouse gases occur naturally, how do we know they’re causing Earth’s temperature to rise?
• Why should we be worried that the planet has warmed 2°F since the 1800s?
• Is climate change a part of the planet’s natural warming and cooling cycles?
• How do we know global warming is not because of the sun or volcanoes?
• How can winters and certain places be getting colder if the planet is warming?
• Wildfires and bad weather have always happened. How do we know there’s a connection to climate change?
• How bad are the effects of climate change going to be?
• What will it cost to do something about climate change, versus doing nothing?

Climate change is often cast as a prediction made by complicated computer models. But the scientific basis for climate change is much broader, and models are actually only one part of it (and, for what it’s worth, they’re surprisingly accurate ).

For more than a century , scientists have understood the basic physics behind why greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide cause warming. These gases make up just a small fraction of the atmosphere but exert outsized control on Earth’s climate by trapping some of the planet’s heat before it escapes into space. This greenhouse effect is important: It’s why a planet so far from the sun has liquid water and life!

However, during the Industrial Revolution, people started burning coal and other fossil fuels to power factories, smelters and steam engines, which added more greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. Ever since, human activities have been heating the planet.

Where it was cooler or warmer in 2020 compared with the middle of the 20th century

Global average temperature compared with the middle of the 20th century

+0.75°C

–0.25°

30 billion metric tons

Carbon dioxide emitted worldwide 1850-2017

Rest of world

Other developed

European Union

Developed economies

Other countries

United States

E.U. and U.K.

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6 myths about climate change busted

4th August 2022 - Journey to net zero

While most of us know that it’s a critical time for us to work on tackling climate change, we still get lots of questions about the real threat that it poses to our world. Here we debunk some of the most common incorrect, yet oft-repeated, climate change myths – to separate fact from fiction.

Myth 1: 'The climate has always been changing, this is no different'

It’s true that throughout earth’s 4.5-billion-year history, the climate has changed a lot. What is different is the dramatic and unprecedented scale of climate change . The rate of temperature rise is at least 10 times faster than that of the last mass extinction about 56 million years ago, when 95% of marine and 70% of land species were wiped out.

NASA has compiled a scientifically evaluated and compelling list of evidence for rapid climate change. This includes:

Global temperature rise The planet's average surface temperature has risen about 1.1 degrees Celsius (°C) – 2 degrees Fahrenheit (°F) – since the late 19 th century. Most of the warming occurred in the past 40 years.

Rising ocean levels Rising temperatures are causing glaciers and ice sheets to melt, adding more water to the oceans and causing the sea level to rise. Oceans absorb 90% of the extra heat from global warming; warmer water expands and so our oceans are taking up more space.

Warming ocean The ocean has absorbed much of this increased heat, with the top 100 meters (about 328 feet) of ocean showing warming of more than 0.33°C (0.6°F) since 1969.

Shrinking ice sheets Greenland lost an average of 279 billion tons of ice per year between 1993 and 2019, while Antarctica lost about 148 billion tons of ice per year.

Glacial retreat Glaciers are retreating almost everywhere around the world, including in the Alps, Himalayas, Andes, Rockies, Alaska and Africa.

Decreased snow cover Satellite observations reveal that the amount of spring snow cover in the Northern Hemisphere has decreased over the past five decades and the snow is melting earlier.

Sea level rise Global sea levels rose about 8 inches (20 centimetres) in the last century. The rate in the last two decades, however, is nearly double that of the last century and accelerating slightly every year.

Extreme weather events Since 1950, t he number of record high temperature events worldwide has been increasing, while the number of record low temperature events has been decreasing. Climate change is causing many extreme weather events to become more intense and frequent, such as heatwaves, droughts, forest fires and floods.

The scientific evidence that climate change is a real, present threat is undeniable.  

Myth 2: 'It’s freezing outside – so much for global warming!'

Weather and climate are not the same. A cold spell in winter is definitely not a valid reason to dismiss global warming.

Climate is the average pattern of weather for a particular region and time period, using scientific data collected over decades. The terms global warming and climate change refer to a broad temperature shift across the entire earth's surface over the course of years and decades.

But weather can change minute-to-minute, hour-to-hour, day-to-day and season-to-season  in a specific location. That’s why we all love to talk about the weather – it’s always changing. A good analogy is that weather is your current mood and climate is your overall personality.

Scientists predict global warming will cause more volatile weather, with more intense hurricanes, storms, flooding and hot and cold temperature records broken. The UK Met Office reported a new UK and England temperature record of 40.3°C (104.5°F) on 19 July 2022 in Coningsby, Lincolnshire. This marked a milestone in UK climate history, with 40°C (104°F) being recorded for the first time in the UK and 35°C (95°F) being recorded for the first time in Scotland.

In the Northeast US, extreme winter storms have also been on the rise. Between the winters of 2008/09 and 2017/18 there were 27 major winter storms, which is three to four times the totals for each of the previous five decades. 1

You’re in an ever diminishing minority if you still think climate change isn’t a concern. In a recent Ipso MORI poll , 85% of Britons are now concerned about climate change and nearly three in four (73%) say that the UK is already feeling the effects of climate change.  Similarly, 62% of Americans see the effects of climate change according to a poll done in late 2019. 2  

Myth 3: 'Carbon dioxide can’t be responsible for climate change – plants, crops and trees need CO 2 to grow'

Plants do need carbon dioxide (CO 2 ), that’s true. But there’s a limit to the amount they can absorb and, with deforestation increasing, this limit is getting lower. It’s not the nature of CO 2 that causes problems, it’s the quantity the world is pumping out into the atmosphere.

It’s widely recognised by scientists and governments that climate change is being triggered by higher levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Their name derives from the 'greenhouse effect' these gases create by trapping heat from the sun and so warming the earth’s surface and the air above it.

CO 2 is the most abundant of the greenhouse gases, and the biggest contributor to global warming, which is why cutting carbon emissions, carbon footprints or seeking low-carbon alternatives are ways we can all address climate change and achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2050.  

Myth 4: 'There’s no way humans are responsible for climate change'

Climate change is happening to an extent that cannot be explained by natural factors alone.

Global temperatures have been rising for over a century since industrialisation began. They’ve accelerated in the past 30 years and are now the highest since records began. The worldwide scientific community agrees that the global warming we are experiencing is man-made.  

Myth 5: 'It’s solar changes that are causing the earth to warm, not us'

The sun powers life on earth, keeping the planet warm enough for us all to survive. The sun also influences earth’s climate; subtle changes in earth’s orbit around the sun were responsible for past ice ages.

But the global warming we’ve seen over the last few decades is too rapid and dramatic to be linked to changes in earth’s orbit, and too large to be caused by solar activity. For more than 40 years, satellites have observed the sun's energy output, which has gone up or down by less than 0.1 percent during that period, while global warming has increased.

The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concluded that warming from increased levels of human-produced greenhouse gases is actually many times stronger than any climate change effects due to the sun.

NASA’s conclusion is even more dramatic; since 1750, the warming driven by greenhouse gases from our burning of fossil fuels is over 50 times greater than the slight extra warming coming from the sun itself over that same time interval.  

Myth 6: 'There’s no point doing anything – it’s all too late'

This is a critical time to take action on climate change. And it can be done.

The latest reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have made it clear that we’re running out of time, but there is still a limited window of opportunity to implement policies and take action this decade to ensure we avoid the worst effects of climate change. It’s still possible for the world to reach net zero and to limit warming to 1.5°C, but much more action is needed this decade, from governments, businesses and others, to make that happen.

We already have the technology and systems to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2050. We can halt climate change and create a sustainable future for humans and nature.  Energy companies, industry, vehicle manufacturers and governments have an essential part to play  and this is a priority for us as a company. We’re committed to leading the clean air transition .

But individually, we can also each make greener daily decisions and take actions that collectively will affect the planet for good – from the way we travel to what we buy and eat.  

Read our climate commitment

1 The New York Times: How climate change is affecting winter storms

2 Pew Research Center: For Earth Day 2020, how Americans see climate change…

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How Climate-Change Fiction, or “Cli-Fi,” Forces Us to Confront the Incipient Death of the Planet

As part of its ongoing “Original Stories” series, Amazon has assembled a collection of climate-change fiction, or cli-fi, bringing a literary biodiversity to bear on the defining crisis of the era. This online compilation of seven short stories, called “ Warmer ”—containing work from a Pulitzer Prize winner (Jane Smiley) and two National Book Award finalists (Lauren Groff and Jess Walter), among others—offers ways of thinking about something we desperately do not want to think about: the incipient death of the planet.

There is something counterintuitive about cli-fi, about the fictional representation of scientifically substantiated predictions that too many people discount as fictions. The genre, elsewhere exemplified by Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam Trilogy and Nathaniel Rich’s “ Odds Against Tomorrow ,” brings disaster forcefully to life . But it is a shadowy mirror. Literature has always been a humanist endeavor: it intrinsically and helplessly affirms the value of the species; its intimations of meaning energize and comfort. But what if there is scant succor to be had, and our true natures are not noble but necrotic, pestilential? We have un-earthed ourselves. Yet we claim the right to gaze at our irresponsibility and greed through fiction’s tonic filter. The stories in “Warmer,” which possess the urgency of a last resort and the sorrow of an elegy, inhabit this contradiction. They both confront and gently transfigure the incomprehensible realities of climate change.

The collection starts in the near future and marches forward chronologically. The first two entries, “The Way the World Ends,” by Walter, and “Boca Raton,” by Groff, sketch our “before” or “before-ish” purgatory: weather systems in rebellion—a “swirling, greasy snow” in central Mississippi, rashes of hurricanes—but their effects pale in comparison to what characters dread is to come. (Catastrophes hinted at in some of the stories serve as backdrops for subsequent ones, as if to fold “now,” “soon,” and “after” into one continuous descent: an unhurried extinction-in-progress.) In Walter’s contribution, a hydrogeologist in her late thirties contemplates the idiocy of freezing her eggs when “one hundred percent of legitimate climate scientists believe the world to be on the verge of irreversible collapse.” In Groff’s story, a mother berates herself for having a daughter—a “terrible mistake she had made out of loneliness. The sheer selfish stupidity of bringing a child into the beginning of the end of the world as humans know it.” Both authors summon a sense of frustration and crashing despair, and an anguished appreciation for the beauty of life as it is, which proves inseparable from the beauty of the lie that life will stretch on forever. One must give up on such beauty—one must not have children—and yet the tranquilizing pleasure of the world forbids it. After a storm, a student in Walter’s story notices “the clarity and richness, the way the air is imbued with moisture and the colors—the sky a soft white-blue, like a thing forgiven.”

Groff’s and Walter’s pieces are present-day snapshots; the next several tales in “Warmer” plunge the reader into “during” and “after”—climate change has further distorted society, and the collection’s aura of literary realism veers toward the speculative. Here, work from Jesse Kellerman, Edan Lepucki, and Sonya Larson conjures the oppressiveness of the heat, the desperate thrill of opening a freezer at the store. (“It used to get chilly right before dawn, Daddy told me. . . . Shiver was a word you could use.”) There are economies in which water is replacing cash; the lone, brilliant apparition of a tree; school classrooms where teachers of an older generation pine for what they lost, preaching activism and environmental responsibility to dirt-poor students. The stories think through details. (What would the billionaires do? Start a space colony.) And they feel through specific emotional textures, asking us to empathize with the generations we are now cursing through inaction. (In an Op-Ed for the Times , Michelle Alexander wondered whether Americans would approach the climate crisis differently if they believed in reincarnation.) Several authors foresee deep demographic rifts; hardened young people regard adults with contempt, confusion, and bitterness. (This is presaged in Groff’s tale, when a toddler stands “in the middle of the room, sucking her finger and glaring at her mother with her dark eyes.”) The ranks of those who can live comfortably are profoundly thinned. On Larson’s Long Island, the prospect of owning a fur coat seems laughable: Where would the animal come from? Where would the money come from? Where would the cold weather come from?

Kellerman’s entry, “Controller,” takes the form of an experiment, with climate as the independent variable. The same story unfolds three times, on the same January day, but at different temperatures. The subtle gradient alters details, down to whether a dog is alive or dead, and determines the pitch of the characters’ rages and resentments. (“The air had changed, no longer a palliative billow but deafening and full of wrath. . . . He might yet bend her to his will.”) The mechanics of the piece gesture at one reason that climate change can prove so tricky a literary topic. We metaphorize nature endlessly, converting its phenomena into reflections of ourselves. This process feels as unconscious as translating oxygen into carbon dioxide; it is difficult to pry out the autonomous meaning of the sky and the ground, to fight environmental battles on their own terms. For Groff (whose ocean, an alien wakefulness “chewing darkly on the sand,” should defy human comprehension, and yet is readily understood as avarice or mortality), our epistemic failures echo a failure to act, to respond. They have the weight of a spiritual failure. “She knew that she could not save her daughter, that there would be no saving,” Groff writes, borrowing the language of doomsday cults. “She would be left behind among the disappointed.”

Taken together, the stories in “Warmer” raise the question of whether a poetics of climate change exists. As with gun violence , the crisis demands a form of literary expression that lifts it out of the realm of intellectual knowing and lodges it deep in readers’ bodies. Novels about mass shootings often incorporate black humor, the dispersal of meaning through repetition, and a flat or deadened tone. The works in this collection feel less consistent in mood or manner, but they are similarly occupied by a shared set of challenges: the bigness, the unknowability, of the looming transformations, and how surreal it all seems, and how the author or reader might chart a path between hope and hopelessness. (“It’s one thing to hear adults say there’s no Santa,” a college kid thinks, in Walter’s story. “But to hear there’s no Future?”) Walter offers encouragement in the form of a student who suggests that “you shouldn’t give up hope until you’ve done everything you can.” Groff seems to counter that all we can do is still not enough. As a whole, the collection clears a space between these two poles, in which the meaning of “enough” deforms like melting ice. Perhaps, after the elephants and the whales all die, it is enough to forestall the drowning of Hong Kong. Perhaps it is enough to see snow. “Enough,” as the stories progress, keeps contracting: into the ability to walk outside; into a bowl of mint-chip ice cream; into “oil floating on top” of a polluted lake, forming “little rainbows, swirling away in delicate circles.”

The irrepressibility of this “enough” is not surprising. Literature has long celebrated the flare of beauty in impoverished circumstances; it consoles us with echoes of our own resilience. Even Groff’s story cannot walk away from art. Rather, it achieves a wild, morose fineness, like an El Greco painting. To read “Warmer” is to remember that many people are kind and caring, and to see the last gasps of our life on Earth infused with tragic meaning. But one wonders whether fiction is capable of telling a different story, one in which an intelligent pandemic ravages a planet and destroys itself in the process. Such a tale—non-hominal, untellable—is an asymptote, but Jane Smiley’s “The Hillside” may inch closest. Smiley’s protagonist, a horse, befriends one of the last surviving humans in a lush equinocracy bounded by wasteland. The teen-age human is interesting and mischievous. She appears to plan ahead and to feel affection, but, during the winter, she disappears, and is found in springtime with her throat torn out. “The grass was thin but green,” Smiley writes, “and a few herbs were emerging here and there.” High Note, the horse, is preparing to have a foal. The human is lying at the base of a hill. “High Note stared at her and walked away.”

Watch CBS News

10 common myths about climate change — and what science really says

By Jeff Berardelli

February 27, 2020 / 7:00 AM EST / CBS News

If you've ever engaged in a discussion about climate change , in person or online, you've probably encountered some arguments about what the science says. Some of those claims may sound logical but are actually misleading or inaccurate. 

In fact, misconceptions and outright misinformation have gotten so out of hand, just days ago NASA felt the need to publicly address one of the most popular myths: that a decrease in the the sun's output will soon trigger cooling and a mini ice age. 

This and other topics have been studied thoroughly and debunked over and over again by climate scientists. Nevertheless these myths persist, often as a result of an organized disinformation campaign waged by special interests whose goal is to raise doubts among the public and delay action on human-caused climate change.

Here is a look at 10 of the most common myths about climate change that persist in the public sphere and what science has to say about them.

Myth #1: It's the sun.

While it is true that varying intensity of energy from the sun has driven long-term climate changes like ice ages in the distant past, the sun can not explain the recent spike in warming.

Over tens and hundreds of thousands of years, the Earth's tilt and orbit around the sun varies in predictable cycles. The way these cycles interact with each other cause gradual increases or decreases in the energy from the sun reaching the Earth. That change in energy can gradually — over thousands of years — ease the Earth into and out of ice age cycles. Over about the past 800,000 years, these ice/melt cycles have occurred about every 100,000 years .

But the pace of the recent temperature spike has been markedly faster — taking place over 150 years, with the majority happening over just the past few decades. At that same time, the sun's output has been going in the opposite direction, diverging from the direction in temperature. As this NASA graph shows, solar irradiance is down slightly from a peak in the 1950s.

In fact, according to NASA , in late 2020 the current solar cycle is headed for its lowest level since 1750, meaning the lowest energy output from the sun in 270 years. Still, that change in output is minor, having varied by only  0.1% since 1750.

Myth #2: Carbon dioxide levels are tiny. They can't make a difference.

It's true, carbon dioxide (CO2) makes up a tiny fraction of the atmosphere, less than a tenth of a percent. But because of CO2's powerful heat-trapping greenhouse properties, its presence makes a huge difference. Currently, CO2 levels keep Earth's temperature at a comfortable average of nearly 60 degrees Fahrenheit. As shown in the below animation, if CO2 abruptly dropped to zero, Earth's average temperature would also drop far below freezing, eradicating most life as we know it.

It should be noted: the drop in CO2 doesn’t directly cause the whole drop in temperature. Other feedbacks occur when CO2 is eliminated. Water vapor condenses out as temps fall thus tanking its greenhouse effect & Albedo (reflected sun) increases bec. of ice growth = more cooling. — Jeff Berardelli (@WeatherProf) November 20, 2019

To be clear, a drop in CO2 wouldn't directly cause the whole drop in temperature. The biggest impact comes from the most abundant greenhouse gas, water vapor, which condenses out due to the fact that colder air holds less water vapor; this is what tanks the greenhouse effect in the simulation. Positive feedbacks like the growth of ice cover would further precipitate the temperature plunge. But it's CO2 which drives all this change. 

Because small concentrations of carbon dioxide have an outsized impact, scientists are very concerned about the recent unprecedented rate of increase. For the vast majority of the past million years, CO2 levels have been below 280 parts per million. Since the industrial revolution of the 1800s, levels have jumped to 415 parts per million — an astounding 48% increase in 150 years. 

As the below graph shows, that dramatic increase in carbon dioxide levels coincides with the rapid warming.

Myth #3: Scientists disagree on the cause of climate change.

Contrary to popular belief, scientists do not disagree that climate change is happening and that it is caused by humans. Various analyses over many years have shown that between 90% and 100% of publishing climate scientists agree that humans are the main cause of our warming climate. Many studies have evaluated the scientific consensus , but the most famous, which as of this summer has been downloaded 1 million times, is this 2013 paper quantifying that agreement at over 97%.

According to NASA, "Multiple studies published in peer-reviewed scientific journals show that 97 percent or more of actively publishing climate scientists agree: Climate-warming trends over the past century are extremely likely due to human activities. In addition, most of the leading scientific organizations worldwide have issued public statements endorsing this position."

For perspective, NASA Goddard Institute climate scientist Kate Marvel put this consensus into relatable terms, "We are more sure that greenhouse gas is causing climate change than we are that smoking causes cancer."

Despite this scientific consensus, only 1 in 5 Americans understand that almost all climate scientists agree that climate change is real and caused by humans. That is called the " Consensus Gap ."

Myth #4: The climate has always changed. It's natural.

No scientist will disagree that the climate changes naturally. It always has and it always will. What makes the recent changes stand out is the unprecedented pace of change. 

Because "the present anthropogenic (human-caused) carbon release rate is unprecedented during the past 66 million years ," as scientists concluded in a 2016 study in Nature Geoscience , the rate of temperature rise is 10 times faster than that of the last mass extinction about 56 million years ago. 

Science has a firm handle on the various reasons why the climate changes naturally. Two examples are long-term fluctuations in sunlight due to changes in Earth's orbit, which modulate ice ages, and shorter-term release of sun-dimming ash from large volcanoes, like Mount Pinatubo , which cooled Earth's surface by 1 degree Fahrenheit in 2001.

None of these natural changes can explain the spike in heating since the 1800s. In contrast, physics calculates that most of the recent warming stems from heat-trapping greenhouse gases released by the burning of fossil fuels. According to climate scientist and data analyst Dr. Zeke Hausfather, "Our best estimate is that 100% of the warming the world has experienced is due to human activities. Natural factors — changes in solar output and volcanoes — would have led to slight cooling over the past 50 years."

Here's a brief video showing the different natural and human-caused factors which factor into temperature changes.

Myth #5: It's cold out. What happened to global warming?

It should be obvious that Earth as a whole can warm up and at the same time certain parts of the Earth can feel cold. Yet cold weather is common cited as evidence against climate change — both sincerely and, by some, disingenuously. Famously, in 2015, Senator Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma held up a snowball on the Senate floor on a cold winter day to deny the existence of climate change. 

At issue here is the difference between weather and climate. When scientists use the term global warming, or climate change , it refers to a broad temperature shift across the entire Earth's surface over the course of years and decades. The term weather, on the other hand, is the short-term, sometimes abrupt day-to-day variation in any given location. A good way to think about it is: Weather is your mood; Climate is your personality. Global warming does not prohibit cold, it just makes extreme cold less intense and less likely. Winter is still winter, it's just not as wintery overall.

This is illustrated below. In recent decades, the ratio of record highs compared to record lows in the United States (and globally) is increasing, averaging approximately two record highs to every one record low. The duration of winter cold snaps is also decreasing, but of course cold air still exists.

Myth #6: In the 1970s scientists warned about a coming ice age. They were wrong. So why should we believe them now?

If you were of age in the 1970s you might remember a number alarming newspaper headlines warning of an ice age on the way. But a deeper dive reveals those articles were based on a small number of papers very much in the scientific minority.

In the mid 20th century, climate science was very much in its infancy — scientists were just learning to decipher the influence of competing forces regulating climate. In the 1960s and 1970s, the science began to mature as researchers unearthed the most prominent factors such as the cooling influence of aerosols and the warming influence of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide — concepts which have stood up to decades of rigorous testing.

Yet even at that early stage, a scientific consensus was emerging on warming, not cooling, in the near future. This was made clear by a 2008 study called "The Myth of the 1970s Global Cooling Scientific Consensus," which conducted a survey of the peer-reviewed literature from 1965 to 1979. The research team found that of the 71 related research papers, 44 indicated warming while only 7 indicated cooling (20 did not make projections either way). "Global cooling was never more than a minor aspect of the scientific climate change literature of the era, let alone the scientific consensus," the authors write.

So why then was there such an outsized influence in the social consciousness from these few cooling papers?  For one thing, the paper suggests, ice ages make for very compelling and memorable headlines. But those stories often included contradictory evidence as well, and other news coverage at the time did focus on warming theories.

Selecting and highlighting past inaccuracies in science, even if they are the exception and not the rule, is an expedient way for politicians and opponents of climate action to sow doubt about the credibility of climate science.  

In short, while a handful of scientists did predict cooling a half a century ago, that is a drop in the bucket compared to the tens of thousands of peer-reviewed scientific papers since then which substantiate that humans are heating the climate.

Myth #7: The temperature record is rigged or unreliable.

A common talking point among climate change skeptics is either "the temperature record is unreliable" or "the temperature record is rigged." That might be a plausible argument if all of science relied on just one or two records; however, there are many independent temperature records produced by various independent bodies worldwide, and their data are remarkably consistent with each other.

These organizations include NASA, NOAA, the UK Meteorological Service, the Japanese Meteorological Service and the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, just to name a few. 

One of the variables they have to account for is a phenomenon called the Urban Heat Island effect. Simply put, large cities — which are expanding — heat up the local atmosphere due to the concentration of dark surfaces, buildings and industries releasing heat. The concern is this extra heat may "contaminate" surface temperature trends. Scientists have studied this phenomena thoroughly and the surprising conclusion is that the warming trend in the temperature record of urban sites, in general, is similar to rural sites. So the urban heat island effect is real but not very substantial.

The temperature records are carefully fine-tuned by data experts to account for factors including the urban heat island effect, instrument sites being relocated, and instrument type changes. While each organization has its own unique methods for data gathering and analysis, the resulting temperature records are largely in sync.

  Myth #8: Climate models are not accurate.

Considering how complex modeling the climate is, most model projections of future temperature, even the rather primitive climate computer models of the 1970s, 80s and 90s, were impressively accurate. This lends extra credibility to the much more advanced climate models of today in predicting future changes.

A recent study evaluated 17 climate model projections published between 1970 and 2007, with forecasts ending on or before 2017. The researchers found 14 of the 17 model projections were consistent with observed real-world surface temperatures, when they factored in the actual rise in greenhouse gas emissions. Here's the assessment of the lead scientist on the study, Dr. Zeke Hausfather: "Climate models have by and large gotten things right."

• Climate models have been impressively accurate for decades, study finds

Dr. Gavin Schmitt, the head of NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, posted an even more recent assessment of the state-of-the-art collection of climate models run in the early 2000s called CMIP3. He concluded, "The CMIP3 simulations continue to be spot on (remarkably), with the trend in the multi-model ensemble mean effectively indistinguishable from the trends in the observations."

In the graph below, the model projection is the black line and the colored lines are the actual temperature datasets from various agencies. As you can see, the magnitude and pace of temperature change consistently match.

To be sure, evaluating global temperature projections are not the only gauge of a model's accuracy. Models can be expected to be accurate on general trends, such as whether global temperatures will warm, overall rainfall increase or hurricanes get stronger. However, when it comes to predicting regional changes and other specific types of events, the climate models are far from perfect. Future projections like whether rainfall will increase or decrease in San Francisco, or whether more or fewer hurricanes will hit Florida, are still uncertain and on the edge of climate models' current ability.

Myth #9: Grand Solar Minimum is coming. It will counteract global warming.

Many scientists speculate that we are now entering the beginning of a Grand Solar Minimum — a period with decreased solar energy which could last a few decades. There is a general acknowledgement that this speculation may be true, but there is a lack of scientific consensus because of limited understanding of longer-term solar cycles.

If this happens it certainly would not be the first time. The most famous Grand Solar Minimum, called the Maunder Minimum, spanned from 1645 to 1715. The period indeed corresponds with a decrease in temperature, but was embedded in a much longer-term cooling period called the Little Ice Age (from about  the 1300s through the mid 1800s ). While it seems logical to assume the cooling during the Little Ice Age may have been due to a decrease in solar activity, leading theories actually point more so to volcanic activity . 

With that said, a scientific collaboration to reconstruct past temperatures, called PAGES2K , indicates that global average temperatures decreased by no more than a couple of tenths of a degree Celsius during the Maunder Minimum. During that time the solar irradiance decreased by one-quarter of one percent.

Several studies have been conducted on the potential impact of a Grand Solar Minimum in the coming decades. The consensus of these studies finds that global average temperatures would decrease by no more than around half a degree Fahrenheit, but likely less. In contrast, human-caused climate change has already warmed the planet by 2 degrees Fahrenheit since the late 1800s, and climate scientists forecast we could see about 4 degrees Fahrenheit of additional warming by 2100.

So, while a Grand Solar Minimum is possible, our best science tells us it would do nothing more than make a small dent in the overall warming trend. According to NASA, that amount of cooling would be balanced by just three years of greenhouse gas emissions and the warming caused by greenhouse gas emissions from the human burning of fossil fuels is six times greater than a possible decades-long cooling from a prolonged Grand Solar Minimum. And any impact of cooling would be short-lived, with temperatures bouncing right back after the minimum ends. 

It's also worth mentioning that during the Maunder Minimum certain regions, like Europe, cooled more than others. If this reoccurs during the next minimum, regional cooling may be slightly more impactful on those given regions, but it would still pale in comparison to the amplitude of warming from human-caused climate change.

Myth #10: Scientists claim climate change will destroy the planet by 2030.

Climate scientists are often accused of making alarming assertions about climate change, like "the impacts will be catastrophic by 2030" or "we only have a decade left to save the planet." First and foremost, scientists are not predicting this. However, some politicians and media headlines have used select bits of scientific data to fuel the impression of impending Armageddon.  

This specific myth comes directly from a quote in the 2018 Special Report produced by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Here's what the quote actually says:

"The report finds that limiting global warming to 1.5°C would require 'rapid and far-reaching' transitions in land, energy, industry, buildings, transport, and cities. Global net human-caused emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) would need to fall by about 45 percent from 2010 levels by 2030, reaching 'net zero' around 2050."

To simplify, the report concludes that if the global community wants to avoid breaching the threshold of 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming, then we need to abruptly cut emissions by rapidly reducing the use of fossil fuels by the end of the decade. At this point the globe has already warmed by slightly more than 1 degree Celsius; the vast majority of scientists agree there is little to no chance that warming will be held below 1.5 degrees. 

Staying below 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming is a goal often cited as the limit needed to prevent the most severe consequences from climate change. But 1.5 degrees is not a magical cut-off point. There is no bright line separating "normal" from "catastrophic." Rather, the impacts of global warming get progressively worse as temperatures incrementally rise. Some have already started. 

One lead author of the IPCC report, Hans-Otto Pörtner, said, "Every extra bit of warming matters, especially since warming of 1.5°C or higher increases the risk associated with long-lasting or irreversible changes, such as the loss of some ecosystems."

For people who live near sea level, like on low-lying Pacific islands, 1.5 degrees of warming will in fact be catastrophic, because it can mean the difference between an inhabitable and uninhabitable homeland due to sea-level rise. For others who are less vulnerable or have more resources, 1.5 degrees won't have quite as drastic an impact.

The IPCC report lays out many other examples of the escalating damage produced by warming above 1.5 degrees.  For instance, at that level of warming, it's estimated that coral reefs will decline another 70% to 90%. If we hit 2 degrees Celsius of warming, the  death toll for coral reefs jumps to 99%. This would not only be devastating to the aquatic species which rely directly on reefs, but also to millions of people worldwide who depend on the ecosystem for sustenance and business, as well as the web of life as a whole.

So, no, the world will not end in 10 years due to climate change. But the longer action is delayed, the more dire the consequences will be and the more likely it is that the changes will be irreversible.

The Skeptical Science website has compiled an exhaustive list of common myths and misconceptions about human-caused climate change, each complemented by peer-reviewed scientific research to illuminate the topics.

Jeff Berardelli is a meteorologist and climate specialist for CBS News.

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How does global warming work?

Where does global warming occur in the atmosphere, why is global warming a social problem, where does global warming affect polar bears.

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Human activity affects global surface temperatures by changing Earth ’s radiative balance—the “give and take” between what comes in during the day and what Earth emits at night. Increases in greenhouse gases —i.e., trace gases such as carbon dioxide and methane that absorb heat energy emitted from Earth’s surface and reradiate it back—generated by industry and transportation cause the atmosphere to retain more heat, which increases temperatures and alters precipitation patterns.

Global warming, the phenomenon of increasing average air temperatures near Earth’s surface over the past one to two centuries, happens mostly in the troposphere , the lowest level of the atmosphere, which extends from Earth’s surface up to a height of 6–11 miles. This layer contains most of Earth’s clouds and is where living things and their habitats and weather primarily occur.

Continued global warming is expected to impact everything from energy use to water availability to crop productivity throughout the world. Poor countries and communities with limited abilities to adapt to these changes are expected to suffer disproportionately. Global warming is already being associated with increases in the incidence of severe and extreme weather, heavy flooding , and wildfires —phenomena that threaten homes, dams, transportation networks, and other facets of human infrastructure. Learn more about how the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report, released in 2021, describes the social impacts of global warming.

Polar bears live in the Arctic , where they use the region’s ice floes as they hunt seals and other marine mammals . Temperature increases related to global warming have been the most pronounced at the poles, where they often make the difference between frozen and melted ice. Polar bears rely on small gaps in the ice to hunt their prey. As these gaps widen because of continued melting, prey capture has become more challenging for these animals.

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global warming , the phenomenon of increasing average air temperatures near the surface of Earth over the past one to two centuries. Climate scientists have since the mid-20th century gathered detailed observations of various weather phenomena (such as temperatures, precipitation , and storms) and of related influences on climate (such as ocean currents and the atmosphere’s chemical composition). These data indicate that Earth’s climate has changed over almost every conceivable timescale since the beginning of geologic time and that human activities since at least the beginning of the Industrial Revolution have a growing influence over the pace and extent of present-day climate change .

Giving voice to a growing conviction of most of the scientific community , the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was formed in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP). The IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report (AR6), published in 2021, noted that the best estimate of the increase in global average surface temperature between 1850 and 2019 was 1.07 °C (1.9 °F). An IPCC special report produced in 2018 noted that human beings and their activities have been responsible for a worldwide average temperature increase between 0.8 and 1.2 °C (1.4 and 2.2 °F) since preindustrial times, and most of the warming over the second half of the 20th century could be attributed to human activities.

AR6 produced a series of global climate predictions based on modeling five greenhouse gas emission scenarios that accounted for future emissions, mitigation (severity reduction) measures, and uncertainties in the model projections. Some of the main uncertainties include the precise role of feedback processes and the impacts of industrial pollutants known as aerosols , which may offset some warming. The lowest-emissions scenario, which assumed steep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions beginning in 2015, predicted that the global mean surface temperature would increase between 1.0 and 1.8 °C (1.8 and 3.2 °F) by 2100 relative to the 1850–1900 average. This range stood in stark contrast to the highest-emissions scenario, which predicted that the mean surface temperature would rise between 3.3 and 5.7 °C (5.9 and 10.2 °F) by 2100 based on the assumption that greenhouse gas emissions would continue to increase throughout the 21st century. The intermediate-emissions scenario, which assumed that emissions would stabilize by 2050 before declining gradually, projected an increase of between 2.1 and 3.5 °C (3.8 and 6.3 °F) by 2100.

Many climate scientists agree that significant societal, economic, and ecological damage would result if the global average temperature rose by more than 2 °C (3.6 °F) in such a short time. Such damage would include increased extinction of many plant and animal species, shifts in patterns of agriculture , and rising sea levels. By 2015 all but a few national governments had begun the process of instituting carbon reduction plans as part of the Paris Agreement , a treaty designed to help countries keep global warming to 1.5 °C (2.7 °F) above preindustrial levels in order to avoid the worst of the predicted effects. Whereas authors of the 2018 special report noted that should carbon emissions continue at their present rate, the increase in average near-surface air temperature would reach 1.5 °C sometime between 2030 and 2052, authors of the AR6 report suggested that this threshold would be reached by 2041 at the latest.

The AR6 report also noted that the global average sea level had risen by some 20 cm (7.9 inches) between 1901 and 2018 and that sea level rose faster in the second half of the 20th century than in the first half. It also predicted, again depending on a wide range of scenarios, that the global average sea level would rise by different amounts by 2100 relative to the 1995–2014 average. Under the report’s lowest-emission scenario, sea level would rise by 28–55 cm (11–21.7 inches), whereas, under the intermediate emissions scenario, sea level would rise by 44–76 cm (17.3–29.9 inches). The highest-emissions scenario suggested that sea level would rise by 63–101 cm (24.8–39.8 inches) by 2100.

The scenarios referred to above depend mainly on future concentrations of certain trace gases, called greenhouse gases , that have been injected into the lower atmosphere in increasing amounts through the burning of fossil fuels for industry, transportation , and residential uses. Modern global warming is the result of an increase in magnitude of the so-called greenhouse effect , a warming of Earth’s surface and lower atmosphere caused by the presence of water vapour , carbon dioxide , methane , nitrous oxides , and other greenhouse gases. In 2014 the IPCC first reported that concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxides in the atmosphere surpassed those found in ice cores dating back 800,000 years.

Of all these gases, carbon dioxide is the most important, both for its role in the greenhouse effect and for its role in the human economy. It has been estimated that, at the beginning of the industrial age in the mid-18th century, carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere were roughly 280 parts per million (ppm). By the end of 2022 they had risen to 419 ppm, and, if fossil fuels continue to be burned at current rates, they are projected to reach 550 ppm by the mid-21st century—essentially, a doubling of carbon dioxide concentrations in 300 years.

A vigorous debate is in progress over the extent and seriousness of rising surface temperatures, the effects of past and future warming on human life, and the need for action to reduce future warming and deal with its consequences. This article provides an overview of the scientific background related to the subject of global warming. It considers the causes of rising near-surface air temperatures, the influencing factors, the process of climate research and forecasting, and the possible ecological and social impacts of rising temperatures. For an overview of the public policy developments related to global warming occurring since the mid-20th century, see global warming policy . For a detailed description of Earth’s climate, its processes, and the responses of living things to its changing nature, see climate . For additional background on how Earth’s climate has changed throughout geologic time , see climatic variation and change . For a full description of Earth’s gaseous envelope, within which climate change and global warming occur, see atmosphere .

The Global Warming Debate: Is It Real? Essay

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Introduction

The impetus for global warming, the arguments backing the idea that global warming is a reality, the arguments backing the idea that global warming is fiction.

The debate on global warming is turning out to be controversial with one side dismissing it as a creation of dishonest scientists and the other dismissing the other as behaving like the proverbial ostrich that buried its head in sand thinking that it was safe only to receive a stinging bite on its uncovered nether from the hyena.

Regardless of the side that has the truth, it is very important to treat the issue of global warming with utmost attention given the potential it has for causing misery on the planet. Whether it is already here with us or it will be here fifty to one hundred years from now, the increased temperatures that come with global warming, as well as the increased precipitation that in turn lead to increased sea levels, are not something that will change earthly life for the better. It is for this reason that global warming needs to be investigated in an organized manner and the evidence evaluated to determine what we are facing. In this brief essay, I will attempt to convey the issues raised by the two opposing sides regarding global warming. The evidence availed by those who claim that it is already here with us will be presented as well as the rebuttals of those who oppose that position.

To start with, the case made by those who think that global warming is already here with us is as compelling as any case can be. The evidence that global warming is with us already begins with the increased temperatures on the surface of the earth (Philander2000, pp.4-5). Scientists have recorded increased temperatures in various parts of the planet and this is something that should worry everyone. The increase is significant because it is more than one degree on the Celsius scale (Ruddiman 2005, pp.12-17). The source of this increase in temperature is said to be the greenhouse gases that are emitted in large quantities from factories around the world. The most common greenhouse gas is carbon dioxide. The mechanism through which these greenhouse gases increase the earth’s surface temperature is that they trap heat and make it hard to escape thus making the atmosphere a huge hot greenhouse (Philander2000, pp.45-49).

The impact of increased temperatures is that precipitation in the form of rainfall has increased. There are numerous parts of Asia, the Americas, and Asia that are witnessing huge amounts of rainfall than it has ever been witnessed before. Floods resulting from these heavy rains have led to the destruction of both human, animal, and plant life. The result of the heavy rainfall is that the sea levels begin rising and this is something that has been proven. The evidence given in this case is that there are some islands in the major seas and oceans that have been submerged. A submerged island is a clear sign of increased water levels in the sea or ocean where the island is located (Houghton 1997, pp.34-36).

Far from rainfall and rising sea levels, ice and snow reservoirs in various parts of the planet have melted at a rate not witnessed before (Mathez 2009, pp.39-41). Mountains that were once beautiful with snow caps are now bare with rocky tops. What else can make ice and snowmelt from the top of mountains? Whatever it is, I am sure it is not cold. The South Pole and the North Pole that were once famous for their unchanging ice and snow levels are fast losing this reputation. This is a clear indication that the planet is gaining more heat than it should. Thus we are likely to witness more floods in some areas as we have already seen in some parts as mentioned in the above paragraph while some parts of the planet will experience scorching heat and therefore undergo desertification.

On the other hand, those who dismiss the alarm on global warming as false have tried their best to make their case as appealing as possible. They have done a commendable job of reducing the enormity of the discoveries made by those who think that global warming is already here and we, therefore, need to start taking immediate action. What do they say about greenhouse gases? They think that the amount of carbon dioxide has not increased on the planet (Horner 2008, pp.11-15). The plants make use of carbon dioxide in photosynthesis and therefore regulate the level of atmospheric carbon dioxide which is supposed to be around 3%.

In addition to the above, those who call global warming a fictitious ploy use their dismissal of the levels of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide to term the temperature shift of about one degree Celsius as normal rise and fall. They claim that it has been there throughout the history of the planet. They also dismiss the claim that ice and snow have disappeared as fictitious with the argument that it is a pattern that takes the form of the appearance and disappearance of snow caps on these mountain peaks through the climatic life of the planet.

The weaknesses of the second group which dismisses global warming are that they lack sufficient explanations for the disappearing islands and the flooding that is becoming common. They are also not availing any substantial explanation for the desertification that is being witnessed in many parts of the world.

In conclusion, the global warming issue as discussed above has two sides. One thinks the problem is already here and we need to take immediate mitigating measures while the other declares global warming a creation of scientists who have an enormous appetite for fiction. It is prudent that the issues raised by these two sides as discussed above are carefully analyzed and action taken given the seriousness of global warming; whether it is already here or a million years away. If it is here, it is good to deal with it and if it is not here, it is good to make it clear and safe the public from anxiety.

• Horner, C., 2008. Red Hot Lies: How Global Warming Alarmists Use Threats, Fraud, and Deception to Keep You Misinformed (1 ST American ed.).New York: Regnery Press.
• Houghton, J., 1997. Globa Warming: The Complete Briefing (2 nd ed.) .New York: Cambridge University Press.
• Mathez, E., 2009. Climate Change: The Science of Global Warming and Our Energy Future (1 st ed.).New York: Columbia University Press.
• Philander, G., 2000. Is the Temperature Rising? The Uncertain Science of Global Warming . New York: Princeton University Press.
• Ruddiman, W., 2005. Earth’s Climate Past and Future . New York: Princeton University Press.
• Effects on Society From Global Warming
• Phenomenon of the Global Warming and the Increase in the Temperatures of the Earth’s
• Global Warming and Melting of Polar Ice Sheets
• The Role of the Arctic in Increasing the Effect of Global Warming
• Global Warming and Effects Within 50 Years
• Global Warming Problem Overview: Significantly Changing the Climate Patterns
• Al Gore and Global Warming: Hurricane Katrina Was Avoidable
• Global Warming: Reality or Hoax?
• Global Warming Positive Aspects
• Global Warming: Physical and Economic Impacts
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IvyPanda. (2021, December 26). The Global Warming Debate: Is It Real? https://ivypanda.com/essays/global-warming-fact-or-fiction-essay/

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Bibliography

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Is global warming real?

Scientific consensus is overwhelming: The planet is getting warmer, and humans are behind it.

In recent years, global warming and climate change have been the subject of a great deal of political controversy, especially in the U.S. But as the science becomes clearer and consensus grows impossible to ignore, debate is moving away from whether humans are causing warming and toward questions about how best to respond.

Temperatures rising

Evidence of rising temperatures is pervasive and striking: Thermometer records kept over the past century and a half show Earth's average temperature has risen more than 1 degree Fahrenheit (0.9 degrees Celsius), and about twice that in parts of the Arctic .

That doesn’t mean temperatures haven't fluctuated among regions of the globe or between seasons and times of day. But by analyzing average temperatures all over the world, scientists have demonstrated an unmistakable upward trend.

This trend is part of climate change , which many people consider synonymous with global warming. Scientists prefer to use “climate change” when describing the complex shifts now affecting our planet’s weather and climate systems . Climate change encompasses not only rising average temperatures but also extreme weather events, shifting wildlife populations and habitats, rising seas , and a range of other impacts.

All of these changes are emerging as humans continue to add heat-trapping greenhouse gases to the atmosphere.

How is climate change measured?

Although we can't look at thermometers going back thousands of years, we do have other records that help us figure out what temperatures were like in the distant past. For example, trees store information about the climate in the place they’re rooted. Each year trees grow thicker and form new rings. In warmer and wetter years, the rings are thicker. Old trees and wood can tell us about conditions hundreds or even thousands of years ago.

Windows on the past are also buried in lakes and oceans. Pollen, particles, and dead creatures fall to the bottom of oceans and lakes each year, forming sediments. Sediments contain a wealth of information about what was in the air and water when they fell. Scientists reveal this record by inserting hollow tubes into the mud to collect layers of sediment going back millions of years.

For a direct look at the atmosphere of the past, scientists drill cores through the Earth's polar ice sheets . Tiny bubbles trapped in the ice are actually samples from the Earth's past atmosphere, frozen in time. That's how we know that the concentrations of greenhouse gases since the Industrial Revolution are higher than they've been for hundreds of thousands of years.

Computer models help scientists to understand the Earth's climate, or long-term weather patterns. Models also allow scientists to make predictions about the future climate by simulating how the atmosphere and oceans absorb energy from the sun and transport it around the globe.

We are the reason

Several factors affect how much of the sun's energy reaches Earth's surface and how much of that energy gets absorbed. Those include greenhouse gases, particles in the atmosphere (from volcanic eruptions, for example), and changes in energy coming from the sun itself.

Climate models are designed to take such factors into account. For example, models have found that changes in solar irradiance and volcanic aerosols have contributed only about two percent of the recent warming effect over 250 years. The balance comes from greenhouse gases and other human-caused factors, such as land-use changes.

The speed and duration of this recent warming is remarkable as well. Volcanic eruptions, as an example, emit particles that temporarily cool the Earth's surface. But they have no lasting effect beyond a few years. Events like El Niño also work on fairly short and predictable cycles. On the other hand, the types of global temperature fluctuations that have contributed to ice ages occur on cycles of hundreds of thousands of years.

The answer to the question, “Is global warming real?” is yes: Nothing other than the rapid rise of greenhouse gas emissions from human activity can fully explain the dramatic and relatively recent rise in global average temperatures.

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Climate change: evidence and causes

Climate change is one of the defining issues of our time. It is now more certain than ever, based on many lines of evidence, that humans are changing Earth’s climate.

Answers to key questions

• Is the climate warming?
• How do scientists know that recent climate change is largely caused by human activities?
• CO 2 is already in the atmosphere naturally, so why are emissions from human activity significant?
• What role has the Sun played in climate change in recent decades? 
• What do changes in the vertical structure of atmospheric temperature – from the surface up to the stratosphere – tell us about the causes of recent climate change?
• Climate is always changing. Why is climate change of concern now?
• Is the current level of atmospheric CO2 concentration unprecedented in Earth’s history?
• Is there a point at which adding more CO2 will not cause further warming?
• Does the rate of warming vary from one decade to another?
• Does the recent slowdown of warming mean that climate change is no longer happening?
• If the world is warming, why are some winters and summers still very cold?
• Why is Arctic sea ice reducing while Antarctic sea ice is not?
• How does climate change affect the strength and frequency of floods, droughts, hurricanes and tornadoes?
• How fast is sea level rising?
• What is ocean acidification and why does it matter?
• How confident are scientists that Earth will warm further over the coming century?
• Are climate changes of a few degrees a cause for concern?
• What are scientists doing to address key uncertainties in our understanding of the climate system?
• Are disaster scenarios about tipping points like ‘turning off the Gulf Stream’ and release of methane from the Arctic a cause for concern?
• If emissions of greenhouse gases were stopped, would the climate return to the conditions of 200 years ago?

Project background

The Royal Society and the US National Academy of Sciences, with their similar missions to promote the use of science to benefit society and to inform critical policy debates, offer this publication as a key reference document for decision makers, policy makers, educators, and other individuals seeking authoritative answers about the current state of climate change science. The publication makes clear what is well established, where consensus is growing, and where there is still uncertainty. It is written and reviewed by a UK-US team of leading climate scientists. It echoes and builds upon the long history of climate-related work from both national science academies, as well as the newest climate change assessment from the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

The Support for the 2014 Edition was provided by NAS Endowment Funds. We offer sincere thanks to the Ralph J. and Carol M. Cicerone Endowment for NAS Missions for supporting the production of this 2020 Edition.

Find out more about the Royal Society's work on climate change on our Basics of Climate Change page , or explore our interactive net-zero carbon infographic .

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Continuing the Conversation on Climate Change

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Climate Explained: Introductory Essays About Climate Change Topics

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Climate Explained, a part of Yale Climate Connections, is an essay collection that addresses an array of climate change questions and topics, including why it’s cold outside if global warming is real, how we know that humans are responsible for global warming, and the relationship between climate change and national security.

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Climate Change Basics: Five Facts, Ten Words

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To simplify the scientific complexity of climate change, we focus on communicating five key facts about climate change that everyone should know. 

Why should we care about climate change?

Having different perspectives about global warming is natural, but the most important thing that anyone should know about climate change is why it matters.  

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What evidence exists that Earth is warming and that humans are the main cause?

We know the world is warming because people have been recording daily high and low temperatures at thousands of weather stations worldwide, over land and ocean, for many decades and, in some locations, for more than a century. When different teams of climate scientists in different agencies (e.g., NOAA and NASA) and in other countries (e.g., the U.K.’s Hadley Centre) average these data together, they all find essentially the same result: Earth’s average surface temperature has risen by about 1.8°F (1.0°C) since 1880. 

( bar chart ) Yearly temperature compared to the twentieth-century average from 1850–2023. Red bars mean warmer-than-average years; blue bars mean colder-than-average years. (line graph) Atmospheric carbon dioxide amounts: 1850-1958 from IAC , 1959-2023 from NOAA Global Monitoring Lab . NOAA Climate.gov graph, adapted from original by Dr. Howard Diamond (NOAA ARL).

In addition to our surface station data, we have many different lines of evidence that Earth is warming ( learn more ). Birds are migrating earlier, and their migration patterns are changing.  Lobsters  and  other marine species  are moving north. Plants are blooming earlier in the spring. Mountain glaciers are melting worldwide, and snow cover is declining in the Northern Hemisphere (Learn more  here  and  here ). Greenland’s ice sheet—which holds about 8 percent of Earth’s fresh water—is melting at an accelerating rate ( learn more ). Mean global sea level is rising ( learn more ). Arctic sea ice is declining rapidly in both thickness and extent ( learn more ).

The Greenland Ice Sheet lost mass again in 2020, but not as much as it did 2019. Adapted from the 2020 Arctic Report Card, this graph tracks Greenland mass loss measured by NASA's GRACE satellite missions since 2002. The background photo shows a glacier calving front in western Greenland, captured from an airplane during a NASA Operation IceBridge field campaign. Full story.

We know this warming is largely caused by human activities because the key role that carbon dioxide plays in maintaining Earth’s natural greenhouse effect has been understood since the mid-1800s. Unless it is offset by some equally large cooling influence, more atmospheric carbon dioxide will lead to warmer surface temperatures. Since 1800, the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere  has increased  from about 280 parts per million to 410 ppm in 2019. We know from both its rapid increase and its isotopic “fingerprint” that the source of this new carbon dioxide is fossil fuels, and not natural sources like forest fires, volcanoes, or outgassing from the ocean.

Philip James de Loutherbourg's 1801 painting, Coalbrookdale by Night , came to symbolize the start of the Industrial Revolution, when humans began to harness the power of fossil fuels—and to contribute significantly to Earth's atmospheric greenhouse gas composition. Image from Wikipedia .

Finally, no other known climate influences have changed enough to account for the observed warming trend. Taken together, these and other lines of evidence point squarely to human activities as the cause of recent global warming.

USGCRP (2017). Climate Science Special Report: Fourth National Climate Assessment, Volume 1 [Wuebbles, D.J., D.W. Fahey, K.A. Hibbard, D.J. Dokken, B.C. Stewart, and T.K. Maycock (eds.)]. U.S. Global Change Research Program, Washington, DC, USA, 470 pp, doi:  10.7930/J0J964J6 .

National Fish, Wildlife, and Plants Climate Adaptation Partnership (2012):  National Fish, Wildlife, and Plants Climate Adaptation Strategy . Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies, Council on Environmental Quality, Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Washington, D.C. DOI: 10.3996/082012-FWSReport-1

IPCC (2019). Summary for Policymakers. In: IPCC Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate. [H.-O. Pörtner, D.C. Roberts, V. Masson-Delmotte, P. Zhai, M. Tignor, E. Poloczanska, K. Mintenbeck, A. Alegría, M. Nicolai, A. Okem, J. Petzold, B. Rama, N.M. Weyer (eds.)]. In press.

NASA JPL: "Consensus: 97% of climate scientists agree."  Global Climate Change . A website at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus). (Accessed July 2013.)

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ENCYCLOPEDIC ENTRY

Global warming.

The causes, effects, and complexities of global warming are important to understand so that we can fight for the health of our planet.

Earth Science, Climatology

Tennessee Power Plant

Ash spews from a coal-fueled power plant in New Johnsonville, Tennessee, United States.

Photograph by Emory Kristof/ National Geographic

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Global warming is the long-term warming of the planet’s overall temperature. Though this warming trend has been going on for a long time, its pace has significantly increased in the last hundred years due to the burning of fossil fuels . As the human population has increased, so has the volume of fossil fuels burned. Fossil fuels include coal, oil, and natural gas, and burning them causes what is known as the “greenhouse effect” in Earth’s atmosphere.

The greenhouse effect is when the sun’s rays penetrate the atmosphere, but when that heat is reflected off the surface cannot escape back into space. Gases produced by the burning of fossil fuels prevent the heat from leaving the atmosphere. These greenhouse gasses are carbon dioxide , chlorofluorocarbons, water vapor , methane , and nitrous oxide . The excess heat in the atmosphere has caused the average global temperature to rise overtime, otherwise known as global warming.

Global warming has presented another issue called climate change. Sometimes these phrases are used interchangeably, however, they are different. Climate change refers to changes in weather patterns and growing seasons around the world. It also refers to sea level rise caused by the expansion of warmer seas and melting ice sheets and glaciers . Global warming causes climate change, which poses a serious threat to life on Earth in the forms of widespread flooding and extreme weather. Scientists continue to study global warming and its impact on Earth.

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Climate Change Essays (Examples)

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Climate Change and Disease Global

As a result of the aforementioned factors, problems have developed that need to be overcome. The best way to describe this situation is by comparing the increase of the rate of infectious disease to the fluctuation in temperatures; a connection needs be established between the two. Being able to control the diseases once they have already infested areas that are not accustomed to dealing with them is the major problem that needs to be resolved. Climate change changes not only the temperatures, but the ecological state of the earth's natural resources (NDC). A shift in this can cause for carriers of diseases to be able to sustain the life of the disease itself. Once these resources are established and the sustained growth of an infectious disease is established, it can become nearly impossible to get rid of. Once the disease has arrived, getting it under control and informing the public…...

mla References: Hasham, Alyshah. "Climate Change Spreads Infectious Diseases Worldwide." International News Services. N.p., 25 Jan. 2011. Web. 16 Apr. 2013. . NRDC. "Infectious Diseases: Dengue Fever, West Nile Virus, and Lyme Disease." Climate Change Threatens Health: Infectious Diseases. Natural Resources Defense Council, n.d. Web. 16 Apr. 2013. . Rowland, Katherine. "Spread of Diseases Linked to Climate Change." Financial Times: Global Economy. Financial Times, 26 Apr. 2012. Web. 16 Apr. 2013. . Smith, Rick. "Is Climate Change Aiding Spread of Disease?" National Geographic. National Geographic Society, n.d. Web. 16 Apr. 2013. .

Climate Change Too Hot to Handle Climate

Climate change; Too hot to handle? Climate Change In respect to the world peace, today, there are various issues of concern for survival of humanity in the universe. There are growing interest into the subject of arms race, regional conflicts and continuous injustices among people and nations. However, among the challenges related to these issues, one surpasses the understanding of humanity on measures to adopt in combating it. This is the subject of climate change. In view of the universe, form its conception; it presented a sustainable and self-sufficient habitat for humanity and life in general (Boom, 2011). However, continued irresponsible and downright misuse, overexploitation and pollution of the environment created the current issue of climate change. Climate change presents a threat to life from animals, to plants and people. Climate change entail the drastic change in weather phenomena and patterns, such as irregular and unpredictable temperature changes, rainfall patterns among others.…...

mla References Australian Catholic University. (2013). Climate Change: Too hot to handle? Australian Catholic Velasquez, M. Andre, C. Shanks, T.S.J., and Meyer, M. .J. (2012). The Common Good. Markkula Center for Applied Ethics. The Royal Society. (2010). Climate Change: a summary of the science. Retrived from   http://royalsociety.org/uploadedFiles/Royal_Society_Content/policy/publications/2010/4

Climate Change Executive of a Company Re

Climate Change Executive of a Company Re: Implications of different approaches for the U.S. To implement and address climate change. Anthropogenic climate change is that which is dominated by human influences, in particular human contribution to atmospheric composition. It is established that anthropogenic climate change is like to continue for many centuries. The effects of climate change on the planet, and on the U.S., will be far-reaching, affecting all aspects of human life on earth (Karl & Trenberth, 2003). Climate change is a global problem, but each nation has the ability to make its own contributions to addressing the problem. There are three main areas where nations can address climate change. The first is to adopt national strategies to stem the pace of climate change; the second is to work within the international system to foster global efforts to stem the pace of climate change; and the third is to adopt national strategies to…...

mla Works Cited: Karl, T. & Trenbarth, K. (2003). Modern global climate change. Science. Vol. 302 (2003) 1719-1721. EPA. (2013). Cap and trade. Environmental Protection Agency. Retrieved April 16, 2013 from  

Climate Change Regulation Climate Change Climate Is

Climate Change egulation Climate Change Climate is referred to as the weather patterns of a particular area over a long period. Earth climate can be divided into five main groups, which are as follow: Tropical Climate Dry Climate Warm Moderate Climate Cold Moderate Climate Cold Climate Areas close to equator are the hottest as they get regular sunshine while areas close to poles are the coldest as they receive minimum amount of sunshine. There are two main factors that affect the climate which are natural and man made. Natural factors include change in climate patterns, atmosphere, rock, ocean, ice sheets and human beings as well. The factors that affect the weather are as follow: Ocean: Oceans currents are responsible for carrying the warmth to different parts of the world. Atmosphere: Air is part of the atmosphere and it is either dry or humid in both cases it is moving some time by heating up and some time by cooling down without the…...

mla References Archer, D. (2011). Global Warming: Understanding the Forecast. Hoboken, N.J.: Wiley. Karling, H.M. (2011). Global Climate Change. Huntington, NY: Nova Science Publ. Maslin, M. (2006). Global Warming: Causes, Effects, and the Future. Stillwater, MN: Voyageur Press. Orts, E.W., & Deketelaere, K. (2001). Environmental Contracts: Comparative Approaches to Regulatory Innovation in the United States and Europe. London: Kluwer Law International.

Climate Change Changing Our World Man Made or Environmental Theory or Reality

Climate Change The world's ecological issues have been studied intensely by scientists in various academic disciplines vigorously for many years and have been greatly accelerated in recent decades. The level of understanding about how natural systems on the planet operate has become immensely sophisticated. Although there are still some issues that remain puzzling, on the whole, scientists have a fairly good understanding of the planets natural systems function. In recent years much of the research has been aided the technological advancements in computing power which allows for modeling systems such as the water cycle, the carbon cycle, and land area use. In fact the knowledge base has grown to a point in which scientist can predict with some accuracy the future of how the natural systems will be affected through the natural changes in these systems coupled with the human interactions that work to alter many of these systems. Climate change, which…...

mla Works Cited Browner, C. (2002, March 1). Polluters Should Have to Pay. Retrieved from The New York Times:   http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/01/opinion/polluters-should-have-to-pay.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm  CO2 Now. (2013, November 22). Earth's CO2 Home Page. Retrieved November 16, 2011, from CO2 Now:   http://co2now.org/  Hanna, S., & Osborne-Lee, I. (2011). Sustainable economy of the ecological footprint: economic analysis and impacts. In V. Esteve, Ecosystems and Sustainable Development VIII (pp. 313-342). Southampton: WIT Press. Hensen, J., Sato, M., Kharecha, P., Beerling, D., & Masson-Delmotte, V. (2008). Target Atmoshperic CO2: Where Should Humanity Aim? NASA Goddard Intitute for Space Studies, 1-18.

Climate Change and How it Effects the World and Agriculture

Climate Change Projections Expected Impact on orld Agricultural The objective of this work is to research climate change which is a critically important issue and is no respecter of person in that it affects all upon the earth, man, beast, fish, fowl, and organism. The water temperature will be affected, the air that is breathed each and every element upon, in and surrounding mother earth will experience collectively the changing of earth's climate. The topic of climatic change is one that is ever present on the minds of scientists and meteorologists as well as many others across the globe. Since the melting of the earth's northern as well as southern polar caps, and the news of 70-foot waves ending luxury cruises, as well as glacier and ice shelf collisions in the news, certainly everyone is slowly but surely becoming aware of the change in the climatic conditions of earth's biosphere. Climatologists and Meteorologist Predictions Climatologists…...

mla Works Cited McMichaels, et al., eds. (2002) Climate Change and Human Health Executive Summary (2002) An Assessment Prepared by World Health Organization Taskgroup in Collaboration with World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environment Programme/U.S. Climate Change Science Program / U.S. Global Change Research Program, Tuesday 20 June 2002 Suite 250, 1717 Pennsylvania Ave, NW, Washington, DC Online available at: gcrp .gov/usgcrp/WHO/WHOEXEC.html http://www.us Climate Change (2005) Online Retrieved from the Internet 05-04-05.   . http://edugreen.teri.res.in/explore/climate/climate.htm  Woteki, Catherine (2002) Food, Agriculture, and Climate Change: The U.S. And International Outlook USGCRP Seminar, 7 January 1997 U.S. Climate Change Science Program / U.S. Global Change Research Program, Online available at: http: / / www.usgcrp.gov/usgcrp/seminars/9717DD.html.

Climate Change Summary of the

The likelihood that climate change is related to human activity is not given a precise number in the summary; it is noted that eighty-nine percent of seventy-five different studies' more than twenty-nine thousand observational data series support global warming as a cause for observed effects, but this figure does not link the climate change to human activity taken on its own. The authors of the summary state that the connection can be stated with "high confidence," however, meaning that they approximate the likelihood as an eight-out-of-ten chance (80%). In order to come to this conclusion, the summary largely relied on data syntheses that seem to have predicted effects of anthropogenic warming it then confirmed without necessarily establishing a causal link. Modeling studies that actually separated warming causes are perhaps the most conclusive pieces of evidence supporting this conclusion. There some rather obvious and large assumption and interpretations made by the authors…...

mla What is certain when it comes to climate change is that the average world temperature has increased by approximately one degree Celsius since 1970, and that sea levels have also shown a measurable rise over the same period. any of the effects of this trend can also be linked to global warming with certainty. Though the evidence in the summary is compelling, the causal relationship between human activity and climate change is still not entirely certain, nor are many of the projected effects of the current climate change or indeed the projections concerning the future of climate change. Though even the summary refrains from language that claims its conclusions as certain, the information it provides does contend that humans are most likely the source of climate change. Natural global temperature variation is also cited as a possible and even a likely contributor, though its effect is more powerful in skewing overall results. The likelihood that climate change is related to human activity is not given a precise number in the summary; it is noted that eighty-nine percent of seventy-five different studies' more than twenty-nine thousand observational data series support global warming as a cause for observed effects, but this figure does not link the climate change to human activity taken on its own. The authors of the summary state that the connection can be stated with "high confidence," however, meaning that they approximate the likelihood as an eight-out-of-ten chance (80%). In order to come to this conclusion, the summary largely relied on data syntheses that seem to have predicted effects of anthropogenic warming it then confirmed without necessarily establishing a causal link. Modeling studies that actually separated warming causes are perhaps the most conclusive pieces of evidence supporting this conclusion. There some rather obvious and large assumption and interpretations made by the authors of this summary in some of their conclusions, namely the anthropogenic cause of climate change. Basically, the studies that the summary used to come to this conclusion laid out a series of effects that they expected to se form warming caused by humans, and then observed those effects. The number of studies that approached this topic from that perspective seems to be the persuasive factor in this study; that is, it is primarily the consensus among scientists rather than the actual data they have collected that suggests an anthropogenic cause of climate change. There have still been no observational studies -- or at least none are referenced in this article -- that can show a direct causal link between human aerosol and carbon emissions and global warming.

Climate Change a Review of Recent Developments

Climate Change A review of recent developments in climate change science. Initial Reaction. This is an eye-opener of an article. The facts presented in the journal Progress in Physical Geography show powerful evidence that the climate is changing faster than earlier believed. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) empirical reports are fascinating to me, and understanding this global threat is important for all citizens. For those who believe conservative talk radio (global warming is being exaggerated they say, and those promoting warnings about carbon releases are just anti-business) -- or otherwise and have doubts about how and why the climate is changing -- this is a good starting point to the real world for those folks. I am frankly amazed at the number of media personalities and even elected public officials that still think climate change is some kind of liberal conspiracy. It is patently absurd to ignore empirical science. Unfortunately, the…...

mla Works Cited Good, Peter, Ceasar, John, Bernie, Dan, Lowe, Jason A., van der Linden, Paul, Gosling, Simon N., Warren, Rachel, Arnell, Nigel W., Smith, Stephen, Bamber, Jonathon, Payne, Tony, Laxon, Seymour, Srokosz, Meric, Sitch, Stephen, Godney, Nic, Harris, Glen, Hewitt, Helene, Jackson, Laura, Jones, Chris D., O'Connor, Fiona, Ridley, Jeff, Vellinga, Michael, Halloran,

Climate Change the United States Environmental Protection

Climate Change The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) warns that climate change is real. In the past one hundred years, the average temperature of the Earth has risen 1.4 F. Scientists read evidence in tree rings, ancient coral, and bubbles trapped in ice cores; they have concluded the Earth is warmer than it has been for at least a millennium (Pearce, 2006). More dramatic climate change is predicted for the next hundred years, when temperatures are expected to rise another 2 to 11.5 F. Even a rise in temperature of just a few degrees can mean large and potentially dangerous shifts in weather and climate ("Climate change basics," 2012). The National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) defines climate change as "a study dealing with variations in climate on many different time scales from decades to millions of years, and the possible causes of such variations" ("Artic climatology and meteorology," n.d.).…...

mla References "Artic climatology and meteorology." (n.d.). National Snow and Ice Data Center. University of Colorado. Retrieved from   http://nsidc.org/arcticmet/glossary/climate_change.html  Caldeira, K. (2012). The great climate experiment. Scientific American Sep2012, pp. 78-63. "Climate change basics." (2012). United States Environmental Protection Agency. Retrieved from  

Climate Change -- the U S Federal Government

Climate Change -- the U.S. Federal Government hat federal agencies and cabinet departments are most responsible for responding to global climate change? This paper points to a number of government departments that President Barack Obama has enlisted to take steps to deal with the impact of climate change. Agencies Involved in U.S. Response to Climate Change The agency that has the most influence in the federal response to climate change is the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The EPA reports that the average temperature on the planet has risen by 1.4°F in the past 100 years, and the temperature is expected to rise another 2 to 11.5°F over the next century, which will have enormously negative impacts on the population in cities, in countries, on the environment, wildlife and wildlife habitat. The EPA believes that the empirical science that has been conducted over the past thirty years by the United Nations' "Intergovernmental Panel on…...

mla Works Cited Council on Environmental Quality. (2010). Climate Change Adaption Task Force. Retrieved May 10, 2013, from   http://www.whitehouse.gov . Energy & Commerce Committee. (2013). Energy and Commerce Members Press EPA for Answers on Climate Change Agenda for Obama's Second Term. United States House of Representatives / Chairman Fred Upton. Retrieved May 10, 2013, from   http://energycommerce.house.gov . Environmental Protection Agency. (2013). What is EPA Doing About Climate Change? Retrieved May 10, 2013, from   http://www.epa.gov .

Climate Change and Global Warming

From watching the movie, it is apparent that as we live in the environment that we live in, it is easy to gather that Americans want a future that has economic prosperity and a safe climate that will be more abundant for future generations to come. This is because the American life consists of material prosperity, political democracy and environmental issues as what people believe then to be. However, since the structure of the United States government has to be reconstructed while global warming is being dealt with by political representatives, the planet's climate is being destroyed by pollutants. However, at the same time that I feel this movie is informative, I do not believe that global warming needs to be completely addressed in today's society. I feel that there are more pressing issues that need to be dealt with today. I also feel that this generation will be long before…...

Climate Change Introduction and Claim Climate Change

Climate Change Introduction and Claim Climate change has occurred throughout the earth's history. Ice ages and other radical transformations to the earth's atmosphere have led to dramatic consequences of life on the planet. Ample scientific evidence shows that climate change is occurring rapidly now, and that much of it has been driven by human activities. Moreover, climate change can have serious consequences for life on earth. According to NASA, the recent climate change pattern has been causing a wide range of problems ranging from ocean acidification to extreme weather events. However, many people and especially those in the United States still believe that climate change is a hoax, an exaggerated claim, or a result of natural fluctuations in weather patterns. While natural fluctuations in climate and localized weather have occurred and still are occurring, there is virtually no disagreement among scientists, in a number of different fields of expertise, that the current climate…...

mla Bibliography Booker, Christopher. "The fiddling with temperature data is the biggest science scandal ever." The Telegraph. 7 Feb, 2015. Retrieved online:   http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/environment/globalwarming/11395516/The-fiddling-with-temperature-data-is-the-biggest-science-scandal-ever.html  In this recent article, Booker claims that temperature readings have been falsified to give the impression that global warming exists. Likewise, Booker claims that the polar ice melting is not related to global warming. This source is therefore useful to offer support and warrants for the claim that global warming is a hoax. "Climate Oscillations and the Global Warming Faux Pause." Real Climate. Retrieved online:   http://www.realclimate.org/  This article helps to debunk some of the common misperceptions about climate change. The author offers ample data showing why some climate change models have oscillated, and why climate change is taking place. This article shows how modeling is important and how the media needs to better understand how to interpret such models.

Climate Change Divorced From the Political Rhetoric

Climate change, divorced from the political rhetoric, is a concrete phenomenon affecting multiple systems. The economic and social ramifications of climate change are ancillary to its measurable physical effects. However, the measurable physical effects vary depending on geographic factors. Climate change has a direct effect on water at all levels of the hydrological cycle. According to the United States Environmental Protection Agency (2014), "we will continue to witness changes to the amount, timing, form, and intensity of precipitation and the flow of water in watersheds, as well as the quality of aquatic and marine environments," (p. 1). Because of the impact of climate change on water quality and availability, additional problems could arise with regards to protection of water resources and the prolonged need to treat water with chemicals. Because of health risks, social justice issues, the economy, and politics, water is one of the most important casualties of climate…...

mla References "The Impact of Climate Change on Water Resources," (n.d.). Retrieved online:   http://www.gracelinks.org/2380/the-impact-of-climate-change-on-water-resources  "Linking Climate Change and Water Resources," (n.d.). Retrieved online:   http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/technical-papers/ccw/chapter3.pdf  United States Environmental Protection Agency (2014). Climate change and water. Retrieved online:   http://water.epa.gov/scitech/climatechange/  The World Bank (2014). Water and climate change. Retrieved online:   http://water.worldbank.org/topics/water-resources-management/water-and-climate-change

Climate Change Impacts on Agriculture

Climate Change Impacts on Agriculture Weather and the related temperature, light and water determine to a large extent the human society's ability to feed themselves and the animals they care for. When the weather changes due to variations n climate or long-terms changes in climate there are very serious impacts on agricultural production and reduction of crop production and these force the farmers to take up new methods of agriculture so that they can cope up with the new situation. Food security of the world is thus directly affected by the existing climate. (Agriculture and climate change: FAO's role) The changes in climate directly affects climate due to both its effect on the agricultural processes and the impact of the changes of climate on agricultural production. One does not really know totally how all this takes place and how the agricultural processes can be altered so that the impact can be…...

mla References Agriculture and Global Environmental Change" Retrieved at   Accessed on 02/26/2004 http://www.ciesin.org/TG/AG/AG-home.html . Agriculture and climate change: FAO's role" Retrieved at   Accessed on 02/26/2004 http://www.fao.org/NEWS/1997/971201-e.htm . Agriculture" Climate Change 2001: Working Group II: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability. Retrieved at   Accessed on 02/26/2004 http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg2/208.htm . Agriculture Sector" Retrieved at   Accessed on 02/26/2004 http://www.usgcrp.gov/usgcrp/Library/nationalassessment/15AG.pdf .

Climate change

Climate change and its impact Introduction Climate is a part of our everyday lives. The change in temperature, swift winds blowing by and rainfall are all because of climate. The United Nation Framework Convention on climate defines climate change as an alteration of the atmosphere because of direct or indirect human activity that jeopardizes the natural climate viability observed over a period. Climate change is tracked using various instruments measuring every aspect of the climate from temperature, humidity, rainfall and wind speed. The climate changes, this is a fact, but there are measure to be put to prevent adverse changes that affect human life in earth. The issue of climate change tends to divulge difference in opinion with there being two groups; climate skeptics and climate believers. Climate skeptics speak about climate as well as scientist would but believers speak about climate as scientists do since they always base their arguments on facts…...

mla References: 1- The scientific consensus on Climate Change 2- https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/394508 Climatic factors influence the emergence and reemergence of infectious diseases, in addition to multiple human, biological, and ecological determinants. 3- https://www.newscientist.com/article/2198091-climate-change-is-making-the-seas-rise-faster-than-ever-un-warns/ Sea levels across the world are rising faster than ever, the United Nations has warned, meaning we urgently need to increase action on climate change. 4- https://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/full/10.1175/2009JCLI3139.1 proposes a modification to the standard forcing–feedback diagnostic energy balance model to account for 1) differences between effective and equilibrium climate sensitivities and 2) the variation of effective sensitivity over time in climate change experiments with coupled atmosphere–ocean climate models. 5- https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1539-6924.2005.00686.x Implicitly contains the question of how to respond to the complex and multi?disciplinary risk issues that climate change poses.  6- https://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/B:CLIM.0000004559.08755.88 Climate change-induced sea-level rise, sea-surface warming, and increased frequency and intensity of extreme weather events puts the long-term ability of humans to inhabit atolls at risk.  7- https://www.pnas.org/content/106/6/1704?sid4fdad7e-23ad-4d54-a3c6-75041ad31328=  This paper shows that the climate change that takes place due to increases in carbon dioxide concentration is largely irreversible for 1,000 years after emissions stop. 8- https://www.pnas.org/content/106/37/15594.short This paper briefly outlines the basics science of climate change as well as he assessment on emissions scenarios and climate change. https://science.sciencemag.org/content/306/5702/1686

What would be a good relevant topic to do a research paper on regarding Emergency Management?

Emergency management is the practice of handling disasters, whether manmade or natural disasters.  There are different levels of emergency management , because emergencies can be local, citywide, statewide, countrywide, or even global.  The current COVID-19 pandemic is a great example of a global emergency and how different regions have handled the pandemic highlight differences in emergency management .

There are a number of different topics to explore in terms of emergency management:

• The role of local emergency management facilities in helping stop local spread of COVID-19.
• Comparing and contrasting country policies in terms of travel restrictions after the COVID-19 environment.

I need help with forming a good title for my research paper on greenhouse gases and the greenhouse effect?

The greenhouse effect , the impact of greenhouse gases , and climate change are all extremely topical issues.  They are considered political, but the science strongly supports the idea that these gases are increasing the earth’s average temperature, creating global climate change, fostering superstorms, and rapidly making the earth less habitable to humans. 

Here are some titles that would be appropriate for a range of essays about greenhouses gases and the greenhouse effect:

• Greenhouses Gases: Great for Plants, Not so Great for Humans
• How Manmade Climate Change Differs from Natural Climate Change

I need help writing an essay about climate change?

Global climate change is a very interesting topic for an essay.  While the scientific evidence for climate change is extremely strong, there has been a push by many to deny or minimize the science.  This is not a science-driven approach, but an economic one.  There are negative short-term economic consequences that come with attempting to mitigate climate change. However, this position is short-sighted, as the long-term negative economic impact of climate change could be devastating.

In fact, because most climate change essays focus on the science, the economy is a great topic for....

Can you help me write a literature review on how far deforestation can be allowed?

A literature review is a particular type of academic assignment. You need to find relevant literature for your topic, summarize it, and analyze it. Since your topic is deforestation , you want to search for literature on that topic for your literature review . However, you want to make sure you choose suitable types of literature. For an academic paper, that means focusing on peer-reviewed articles, book chapters, and other scholarly works.

First, think about your central question. The query appears to concern the tipping point, where deforestation will have irreversible environmental consequences. In fact, deforestation....

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Global Warming: Fiction or Truth? Essay example

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True or false; global warming is a catastrophic event that is occurring by natural and human means that is causing global temperature to rise and that can lead to many disasters? This has been an issue that hundreds and maybe thousands of scientists and citizens have debated about back and forth. The thought of global warming existing is a strong claim that many and most people have been backing up. Reliable sources have claims and evidence that is sufficient to prove global warming but other reliable sources also oppose the reality of global warming’s existence. If there is no action made towards the prevention of global warming, catastrophic changes may occur to our planet. Most of the claims from global warming currently happening are …show more content…

This can disrupt many ecosystems all over the world. Global warming is caused by humans and natural sources in the world. Scientists have determined the fact that humane activities contribute to global warming by adding more and more amounts of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. These greenhouse gases mostly carbon dioxide (CO²) accumulate in the atmosphere and trap heat that would normally exit into outer space. However scientists have determined that many greenhouse gases are naturally occurring. This is needed to create a greenhouse effect that keeps Earth warm enough to support life. The humane use of fossil fuels is the main source that adds excess greenhouse gases. Other causes of greenhouses emissions include things like driving cars and heating homes with oil or natural gas. With these causes carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases are released into the atmosphere. Deforestation is a huge source of greenhouse gases. With the decrease of trees, this means less carbon dioxide conversion to oxygen. During the last 150 years of the industrial age the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide has increased by 31% (Larry West 2008). Greenhouse emissions grow a huge consequence as more heat is trapped in the atmosphere and less escapes back into space. The increase of trapped heat changes the climate and alters weather patterns, influences the length of seasons, causes rises in sea level which leads to flooding, and can lead to

The Science Isn T Settle Analysis

Climatologist Tim Ball argues this point in his article, The Science Isn’t Settles – The Limitations of Global Climate Models. Dr. Ball looks at the data of global temperatures and concludes that the earth’s atmosphere is actually cooling while in its cooling cycle, which is the complete opposite to the assumption that the atmosphere is heating up. In 1999 a petition was asked the U.S. Government to reject the environment treaty The Kyoto Protocol, which was signed by over 17,000 other scientists sharing the same views. These scientists view that there is no convincing scientific evidence around the idea of global warming and all of these conclusions are not justified. They believe that the human release of CO2 and other greenhouse gasses are not contributing to global warming and the climate change, instead the increase of CO2 is promoting plant and animal growth. Some other scientists argue that global warming is being blown way out of portion and its effects are so small we will not notice its effects. They believe this increasing in extensive publicity is an environmentalist scam for more recognition, power, and

What Environmental Impact Did The Industrial Revolution Have On Us?

The burning of fossil fuels has led to global warming. This is because the air has become so polluted with greenhouse gases and other toxic chemicals. As the population continues to grow, more trash, toxic chemicals, and human waste invade our earth. When people throw their waste into the trash, it goes into landfills where it may take thousands of years to break down. While that waste breaks down it releases many harmful chemicals into the air.

The Controversy of Global Warming: Who Is Right? Essay example

Most people believe that the controversy of the existence of global warming stopped long ago. In fact, that is very untrue. The common belief is that, yes the earth is warming, the glaciers are melting, and our atmosphere is being polluted, all due to man-made green house gases. What’s new? Shockingly there are still some scientists who disagree. Global warming; a very controversial phenomenon that is still happening, which already is not being handled sufficiently enough, is being argued that it does not exist whatsoever. This causes the general public to believe that they are being educated on the falsehoods of modern science, when in fact that they need to be educated on when to distinguish misinformation for themselves. These

Vector-Borne Diseases Contributing Factors Related To Climate Change

Global Warming has been a big issue that has effects on the environment, people, and the world, and if not stopped now, the results could be catastrophic. The main cause of climate change is likely to be the result of too much carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere. CO2 creates a blanket which traps heat. Burning fossil fuels for energy, such as coal, oil, and natural gas release CO2 which impacts the atmosphere heavily. Waste management and agricultural practices also produce gases that contribute to climate change, such as methane. There are many contributing factors to climate change.

Persuasive Speech Outline The Importance of Recycling Essay

Global warming is caused by several things. One of these is the release of carbon dioxide into the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere by using energy generated from burning fossil fuels.

Different Arguments And Theories On Global Warming And Why To Take Action?

Every year, almost 7 billion tons of carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere by human activity. That is the equivalent of 107,700,000 jet airplanes being in the air at once! This harrowing figure is the main cause of global warming, and has been increasing for the last 50 years. Global warming is caused by the increase of greenhouse gasses, carbon dioxide and methane primarily, in the earth's upper atmosphere directly caused by human burning of fossil fuels, industrial, farming, and deforestation activities. Global warming is defined as an increase in the average temperature of the earth's atmosphere (especially a sustained increase that causes climatic

Global Warming, Fact Or Fiction? What Is The Evidence For Or Against? Essay

I believe that Global warming is in fact true and that the evidence that we see in regards to the temperature change and environmental change does defend my perspective. Studies have shown that global surface temperature has increased about 0.74°C within the last century. The global surface temperature is also expected to increase by another 3–5°C in 100 years to come (5). Even though this relatively small number may seem insignificant to many people, it has caused many changes to the overall atmosphere that can be further discussed. Changes that are associated with the atmosphere and also the climate change have an influence on the biosphere and human environment (1). The warming of earths

Global Warming - Truth or Myth: Two Sides to Every Story Essay

There are always two sides to every story and every different point of view has a right to be heard. When it comes to the discussion of global warming—a gradual increase in the earth’s surface temperature—there are two very distinct and opposing points of view. The world seems to be split between global warming being caused by humans and it being a natural occurrence; the latter being the viewpoint that I strongly support due to the evidence I will present in detailin this paper. In contrast, I will also discuss, in Part II, the “anti-thesis” or the opposing viewpoint that humans are actually the

The Controversial Issue Of Ecological Footprint Or Climate Change

Most climate scientists agree with the idea that the main cause of the current global warming trend is human expansion of the "greenhouse effect", warming that results when the atmosphere traps heat radiating from Earth toward space. Over the last century, the burning of fossil fuels like coal and oil has increased the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2). This happens because the coal or oil burning process combines carbon with oxygen in the air to make CO2. To a lesser extent, the clearing of land for agriculture, industry, and other human activities has increased concentrations of greenhouse

The Controversie over Global Warming

Human activities are the leading contributing factors to climate change contributing to global warming. Whether it’s driving cars or heating our homes with natural gas, we are releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. According to an article written by Darryl Fears, “the planet is warming at an accelerated pace without any doubt, that humans are causing it with 95 percent certainty and that the past three decades have been the hottest since 1850.” The majority of human causes of global warming can be contributed to the increase of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide, into the atmosphere. Of the greenhouse gases, carbon dioxide is said to be the most considerable cause of global warming, and most carbon dioxide emissions are the result of burning fossil fuels.

The Effects Of Global Warming On The Climate Change

There are various human and natural causes of global warming. All these causes contribute to the amount of greenhouse gases which are the major cause of warming of the earth atmosphere. Human activities like deforestation, burning of fossil fuels, emissions from manufacturing industries, emissions of greenhouse gases like CO2, CFCs, NO2 and halocarbons which is a group of gases containing fluorine, chlorine and bromine. Burning of fossil fuels like petroleum, coal, etc. release carbon which combines with oxygen in the air to form carbon dioxide which is a

Global Warming Problem In The United States

Global warming is a worldwide epidemic that in large part is directly caused by human activities. NASA defines global warming as “the unusually rapid increase in Earth’s average surface temperature[…] due to the greenhouse gasses released as people burn fossil fuels.” In the past 100 years, global temperatures have been rising because of the increasing amount of greenhouse gasses being released into the atmosphere. Greenhouse gasses, such as CO2, are released when humans burn fossil fuels such as coal. People may argue that climate change is a natural part of life and has occurred in the

Global Warming: Fact or Fiction? Essay

Many claim that global warming is obvious and that all arguments against global warming fall. The problem is that what is “obvious” often isn’t true. “A gradual increase in the overall temperature of the earth's atmosphere generally attributed to the greenhouse effect caused by increased levels of carbon dioxide, chlorofluorocarbons, and other pollutants.” This is the Webster dictionary definition of Global Warming, which basically says that due to an overflow of harmful and hazardous chemicals in the air that it is creating a danger zone for the earth. This is because these chemicals are increasing the earths’ temperature. Svante Arrhenius, a Swedish scientist was the first person to claim that in 1896 that fossil fuel combustion may

Global Warming Is The New Epidemic

Global Warming is caused by various things. However the main causes is by human activities such as burning of fossil fuels, land clearing, agriculture, increased volumes of carbon dioxide and greenhouse gases are believed to be the primary sources of global warming in the past five decades. It has been recently predicted by global warming scientists from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate that the average temperatures of the globe could possibly increase between 1.4℃ and 5.8℃ by the year 2100. This temperature rise can and will possibly affect planet Earth in many different ways.

Argumentative Essay On Global Warming

Greenhouse gases are compounds in the atmosphere that can trap and hold extra heat, which increases the temperature in the atmosphere. Greenhouse gases is the cause of the greenhouse effect that leads up to global warming. The greenhouse effect is the trapping of the sun’s warmth in the lower atmosphere that is due to the visible radiation from the sun. The solar radiation reaches the Earth’s atmosphere, then the rest of the sun's energy is absorbed by the oceans and lands which result in the heating of the Earth. After that the heat from the Earth goes towards space, some of the heat is trapped in the atmosphere by greenhouses gases which make the Earth warm enough to tolerate living life. The burning of fossil fuels and land clearing start to increase the number of greenhouse gases which travels into the atmosphere. The result of trapping extra heat cause the Earth’s temperature to rise. Scientist's has proven that the constant increase of heat in the atmosphere is caused by humans. The reason humans are proven guilty for the increase of global warming is because of the amount of carbon that is put into the atmosphere. Carbon is released from burning coal, oil, and gas or cutting down and burning forests. Carbon (CO2) is known as the main source of heat-trapping gas which is mainly responsible for the increase of warming over the years. The removal of trees is another cause of global

Related Topics

• Global warming
• Greenhouse gas
• Carbon dioxide
• Climate change