Is climate change real?

Is climate change real? I'll pull the latest scientific evidence to answer you.

Yes, climate change is real — this is the established position of overwhelming scientific evidence and major scientific organizations.

What the science says

There is scientific consensus that the Earth has been consistently warming since the start of the Industrial Revolution, and that this warming is mainly the result of a rapid increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) caused by human activities. This human role in climate change is considered "unequivocal" and "incontrovertible".

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the United Nations body for assessing climate science, confirms that human activities, mainly through emissions of greenhouse gases, have unequivocally caused global warming.

According to the IPCC, "Since systematic scientific assessments began in the 1970s, the influence of human activity on the warming of the climate system has evolved from theory to established fact."

Why scientists say the current warming is different

Earth's climate has changed throughout history, but the current warming is happening at a rate not seen in the past 10,000 years.

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. Paleoclimate evidence from ice cores, tree rings and other sources reveals that current warming is occurring roughly 10 times faster than the average rate of warming after an ice age.

Evidence

NASA and other agencies point to multiple independent lines of evidence, collected from satellites, instruments, ice cores, rocks and tree rings:

From global temperature rise to melting ice sheets, the evidence of a warming planet abounds.

Scientific Consensus

Nearly all actively publishing climate scientists say humans are causing climate change.

Surveys of the scientific literature are another way to measure consensus. A 2019 review of scientific papers found the consensus on the cause of climate change to be at 100%, and a 2021 study concluded that over 99% of scientific papers agree on the human cause of climate change.

No scientific body of national or international standing disagrees with this view. The California Governor's Office website lists nearly 200 worldwide scientific organizations who hold the position that climate change has been caused by human action.

While natural variability plays some part, the preponderance of evidence indicates that human activities—particularly emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases—are mostly responsible for the warming observed since the mid-20th century.

In short, that the climate is changing and that human activities are the dominant cause since the mid-1800s is not a matter of ongoing scientific debate — the debate in science is about the details, impacts, and best responses.