Is Global Warming Caused By Humans Evidence Says Yes Fact Check

An Oct. 3 Facebook video (direct link, archive link) shows Ian Plimer, a skeptic of human-driven climate change, speaking at the Australian Conservative Political Action Conference in 2022. "Game over. We are dealing with a fraud," the video is captioned. "Geologist, Professor Ian Plimer, exposes the monumental fraud that is 'human-induced global warming' in just two minutes: 'No one has ever shown that human emissions of carbon dioxide drive global warming … And if... The post was shared more than 3,000 times in two months.

More from the USA TODAY Fact-Check Team: More than a century of experimental and observational research by generations of scientists shows that modern global warming is driven by greenhouse gases emitted by human activity. Scientists know that natural CO2 emissions are not driving modern global warming because they are reabsorbed by natural "carbon sinks." However, additional emissions by humans have resulted in excess greenhouse gas accumulation in the... There is unequivocal evidence that Earth is warming at an unprecedented rate. Human activity is the principal cause. Earth's climate has changed throughout history.

Just in the last 800,000 years, there have been eight cycles of ice ages and warmer periods, with the end of the last ice age about 11,700 years ago marking the beginning of the... Most of these climate changes are attributed to very small variations in Earth’s orbit that change the amount of solar energy our planet receives. The current warming trend is different because it is clearly the result of human activities since the mid-1800s, and is proceeding at a rate not seen over many recent millennia.1 It is undeniable that... This extra energy has warmed the atmosphere, ocean, and land, and widespread and rapid changes in the atmosphere, ocean, cryosphere, and biosphere have occurred. Earth-orbiting satellites and new technologies have helped scientists see the big picture, collecting many different types of information about our planet and its climate all over the world. These data, collected over many years, reveal the signs and patterns of a changing climate.

Scientists demonstrated the heat-trapping nature of carbon dioxide and other gases in the mid-19th century.2 Many of the science instruments NASA uses to study our climate focus on how these gases affect the movement... From the measured impacts of increases in these gases, there is no question that increased greenhouse gas levels warm Earth in response. This article was adapted from the NASA/JPL Global Climate Change website and Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports. NASA’s Global Climate Change website provides the public with accurate and timely news and information about Earth’s changing climate along with current data and visualizations presented from the unique perspective of one of the... The website is produced by a team at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which Caltech manages for NASA. The following information is sourced from the Global Climate Change website.

that 97 percent or more of climate scientists agree: human-caused climate change is real and ongoing. 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. Earth's climate has changed throughout history. In the past 650,000 years, there have been seven cycles of glacial advance and retreat, with the abrupt end of the last ice age about 11,700 years ago marking the beginning of the modern... Most of these climate changes are attributed to very small variations in Earth's orbit that alter the amount of energy our planet receives from the sun. But the warming we've seen over the past few decades is too rapid to be linked to changes in Earth's orbit and too large to be caused by solar activity.

Ice cores drawn from Greenland, Antarctica, and tropical mountain glaciers show that Earth's climate responds to changes in greenhouse gas levels. Ancient evidence can also be found in tree rings, ocean sediments, coral reefs, and layers of sedimentary rocks. This ancient, or paleoclimate, evidence reveals that current warming is occurring roughly 10 times faster than the average rate of ice-age-recovery warming. Carbon dioxide from human activity is increasing more than 250 times faster than it did from natural sources after the last ice age. 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... 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...

(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... There are multiple lines of evidence that our greenhouse gas emissions are warming the planet. The greenhouse effect is the process whereby “greenhouse” gases such as carbon dioxide create a kind of atmospheric blanket, absorbing outgoing heat energy and re-radiating a portion of it back down to Earth. CO2 levels surged after humans began burning fossil fuels such as coal and oil.

Today, we’re over 420 parts per million — up 50% from pre-industrial times and higher than for millions of years. We know this increase is from burning fossil fuels, which produce a form of CO2 with extremely low levels of the carbon-14 isotope. The drop of carbon-14 in the atmosphere following the Industrial Revolution is a fossil fuel “fingerprint” of the CO2 spike. Satellite measurements confirm a decrease in heat energy radiated out into space and an increase in heat energy re-radiated back down to Earth’s surface. Multiple lines of evidence, including measurements of a variety of planetary indicators, show that climate change is happening and is caused primarily by human activity. As the concentration of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere has increased — much of it from burning fossil fuels — land and ocean temperatures have risen, along with sea levels,...

The changes are consistent with the basic physics of the greenhouse effect that have been understood since the mid-1800s and map to what is expected from human activity. Importantly, the warming of the planet, which is far more rapid than anything experienced in many millennia, cannot be explained by natural variations in the climate, despite claims to the contrary. Scientists also know that fossil fuels are the main source of the carbon dioxide because of the chemical signature of the molecules in the atmosphere. The evidence for climate change is overwhelming. As NASA says, there is “unequivocal evidence that Earth is warming at an unprecedented rate” and that human activity “is the principal cause.” The 2023 National Climate Assessment similarly states, “Human activities—primarily emissions of... It starts with a whisper—rising seas nibbling away at coastlines, warmer winters replacing the cold snaps of old, forests catching fire in places that once stood serene and damp.

Somewhere, a polar bear drifts on a dwindling ice floe. Elsewhere, a farmer stares at the cracked, parched earth that once yielded life. And everywhere, people are asking: Is this real? Is it natural? Is it too late? Global warming.

For decades, those two words have hovered in the background of public discourse, growing louder with each passing year. Yet for every scientist shouting the alarm, there’s a social media post casting doubt. Climate change is real, they say. No, it’s a hoax. It’s human-caused. No, it’s natural.

The confusion is not surprising. When fear, politics, and profit collide, the truth often gets buried. But today, we dig it out. Not with shouting, but with clarity. Not with fear, but with facts. This is a journey through science and storytelling, separating myth from reality, to help you understand what global warming really is—and why the truth matters now more than ever.

The story of global warming is ancient, stretching back far before the Industrial Revolution. Our planet’s climate has never been static. It has swung from ice ages to tropical epochs over millions of years, driven by natural factors like volcanic activity, solar radiation, and changes in Earth’s orbit. But something different began in the late 18th century. Humanity discovered coal, then oil, then gas. We built engines, powered factories, lit up cities, and transformed the world.

And in doing so, we began to alter the chemistry of our atmosphere in ways nature never had. CLAIM: CO2 is not a problem. The Earth has more than enough land and ocean plant life to metabolize it. Global warming is a myth. Climate change is not man made. It is a natural, expected, unstoppable process.

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