Claim: “Blaming humans for warming rests on computer models, and how much is really due to us is heavily contested.”
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No. The case rests on direct measurements, not just models, and it isn’t contested among scientists. The IPCC calls human influence on warming “unequivocal”, the strongest word science uses, and finds that humans have caused essentially all the warming since pre-industrial times.
Every single major national science academy, including the UK’s Royal Society, agrees. Scientists still debate how much more warming is coming, not whether we’re causing it.
That’s why more than 99.9% of peer-reviewed climate studies agree humans are causing it. The claim that only 0.7% of papers “explicitly” say so misses the point: most papers are studying something else and don’t need to restate the blindingly obvious, just as geology papers don’t restate that the Earth is round!
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It’s measured, not just modelled.
Scientists measure the extra CO₂ in the atmosphere, and its chemical signature shows it comes from burning fossil fuels.
Satellites measure more heat being trapped, with less escaping to space at exactly the wavelengths CO₂ absorbs.
The upper atmosphere is cooling while the surface warms. That’s the fingerprint of greenhouse gases trapping heat lower down. If the Sun were responsible, the whole atmosphere would warm.
Models help put numbers on these effects, but the evidence comes from observation and physics understood for over 150 years.
Natural causes don’t explain it. The IPCC’s best estimate is that natural factors such as the Sun and volcanoes have had almost no net effect on warming since pre-industrial times. Human activity accounts for essentially all of it.
The science is overwhelmingly agreed. More than 99.9% of peer-reviewed climate studies agree that humans are causing climate change. The claim that only 0.7% of papers “explicitly” say so misses the point: most papers are studying something else and don’t need to restate the obvious, just as geology papers don’t restate that the Earth is round.
