By Samantha Harrington
Chart by Climate Central (click here)
You likely have heard about global warming in the news, (click here) at school or from a friend. And so you probably have questions such as, “What is causing this warming?” and “What role do humans play in that warming?” and “What’s the science behind the warming?”
According to widely cited research, more than 97% of climate scientists agree that the planet has been warming during the past several decades and that the warming is overwhelmingly the result of human activities.
That conclusion is also shared by the U.S.’s most respected scientific organization, the National Academies of Sciences, and by its counterpart organizations worldwide. The National Academies of Sciences, in a 2020 update to its “Climate Change Evidence and Causes” report, concluded that “Natural causes alone are inadequate to explain the recent observed changes in climate.” It added that “only when models include human influences on the composition of the atmosphere are the resulting temperature changes consistent with observed changes.” Those conclusions are strengthened because they are based on observed, and not simply modeled, global temperatures.
To figure out the causes behind rising global temperatures, scientists start with what is known: They know based on scientific evidence that the planet is warming, and they have long known that greenhouse gases warm Earth’s atmosphere. They know too that humans emit large quantities of those same heat-trapping gases – most importantly including carbon dioxide – by burning fossil fuels and the release of the resulting emissions to the atmosphere....
