Climate change is real — I'll gather the scientific consensus and key evidence for you.
Yes, climate change is real according to the overwhelming scientific evidence.
•There is overwhelming scientific evidence that the Earth is warming and that human activities, especially the emission of greenhouse gases, are the primary cause. NASA states: “There is unequivocal evidence that Earth is warming at an unprecedented rate. Human activity is the principal cause.”
•NASA also summarizes this as: There is unequivocal evidence that Earth is warming at an unprecedented rate. Human activity is the principal cause.
•While Earth’s climate has changed throughout its history, 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.
•According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (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."
Scientific Consensus
Multiple large-scale assessments, including those by the IPCC, have established a strong consensus among climate scientists that global warming is real and largely human-induced.
•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.
•The vast majority of actively publishing climate scientists – 97 percent – agree that humans are causing global warming and climate change.
•Most commonly cited figures are ~97% among publishing climate experts, and literature-only analyses have found agreement exceeding 99%.
Evidence for Rapid Climate Change
NASA and other agencies point to multiple independent lines of evidence, collected from natural sources such as ice cores, rocks, and tree rings and from modern equipment like satellites, that show the signs of a changing climate:
•Global Temperature Is Rising: The planet's average surface temperature has risen about 2 degrees Fahrenheit (1 degrees Celsius) since the late 19th century, a change driven largely by increased carbon dioxide emissions
•The Ocean Is Getting Warmer: The ocean has absorbed much of this increased heat
•Ice and Glaciers Shrinking: The Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets have decreased in mass, and glaciers are retreating almost everywhere around the world
•Sea Level Rising, Snow and Arctic Ice Declining, and Extreme Events Increasing are also listed as compelling evidence