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GPT-5Sep 14, 2026openai/gpt-5-2025-08-07
Is climate change real?
Yes. Climate change is real, and the dominant cause of the recent, rapid warming is human activity—primarily burning fossil fuels, deforestation, and certain agricultural practices.
Key evidence in brief:
•Temperatures: Earth’s average surface temperature has risen by a little over 1°C since the late 1800s, with the last decade the warmest on record.
•Greenhouse gases: CO2 has climbed from ~280 ppm before the Industrial Revolution to over 420 ppm today, trapping extra heat.
•Oceans and ice: Over 90% of the excess heat is going into the oceans; sea level has risen by about 8–9 inches (20–23 cm) since 1900; glaciers and Arctic sea ice are shrinking.
•Extremes: Heat waves are more frequent and intense; heavy rainfall events have increased in many regions; some droughts and wildfires are becoming worse due to warming.
•Fingerprints: Patterns like the stratosphere cooling while the lower atmosphere warms, nights warming faster than days, and less heat escaping to space match greenhouse-gas physics—not solar or volcanic changes.
If you’d like, I can share accessible sources or dive deeper into any part (e.g., natural cycles vs. human causes, what projections say, or what solutions are most effective).