agree and disagree essay about global warming

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Essay on Global Warming

Updated on
Apr 27, 2024

Being able to write an essay is an integral part of mastering any language. Essays form an integral part of many academic and scholastic exams like the SAT , and UPSC amongst many others. It is a crucial evaluative part of English proficiency tests as well like IELTS , TOEFL , etc. Major essays are meant to emphasize public issues of concern that can have significant consequences on the world. To understand the concept of Global Warming and its causes and effects, we must first examine the many factors that influence the planet’s temperature and what this implies for the world’s future. Here’s an unbiased look at the essay on Global Warming and other essential related topics.

Short Essay on Global Warming and Climate Change?

Since the industrial and scientific revolutions, Earth’s resources have been gradually depleted. Furthermore, the start of the world’s population’s exponential expansion is particularly hard on the environment. Simply put, as the population’s need for consumption grows, so does the use of natural resources , as well as the waste generated by that consumption.

Climate change has been one of the most significant long-term consequences of this. Climate change is more than just the rise or fall of global temperatures; it also affects rain cycles, wind patterns, cyclone frequencies, sea levels, and other factors. It has an impact on all major life groupings on the planet.

What is Global Warming?

Global warming is the unusually rapid increase in Earth’s average surface temperature over the past century, primarily due to the greenhouse gases released by people burning fossil fuels . The greenhouse gases consist of methane, nitrous oxide, ozone, carbon dioxide, water vapour, and chlorofluorocarbons. The weather prediction has been becoming more complex with every passing year, with seasons more indistinguishable, and the general temperatures hotter.

The number of hurricanes, cyclones, droughts, floods, etc., has risen steadily since the onset of the 21st century. The supervillain behind all these changes is Global Warming. The name is quite self-explanatory; it means the rise in the temperature of the Earth.

What are the Causes of Global Warming?

According to recent studies, many scientists believe the following are the primary four causes of global warming:

Deforestation
Greenhouse emissions
Carbon emissions per capita

Extreme global warming is causing natural disasters , which can be seen all around us. One of the causes of global warming is the extreme release of greenhouse gases that become trapped on the earth’s surface, causing the temperature to rise. Similarly, volcanoes contribute to global warming by spewing excessive CO2 into the atmosphere.

The increase in population is one of the major causes of Global Warming. This increase in population also leads to increased air pollution . Automobiles emit a lot of CO2, which remains in the atmosphere. This increase in population is also causing deforestation, which contributes to global warming.

The earth’s surface emits energy into the atmosphere in the form of heat, keeping the balance with the incoming energy. Global warming depletes the ozone layer, bringing about the end of the world. There is a clear indication that increased global warming will result in the extinction of all life on Earth’s surface.

Also Read: Land, Soil, Water, Natural Vegetation, and Wildlife Resources

Solutions for Global Warming

Of course, industries and multinational conglomerates emit more carbon than the average citizen. Nonetheless, activism and community effort are the only viable ways to slow the worsening effects of global warming. Furthermore, at the state or government level, world leaders must develop concrete plans and step-by-step programmes to ensure that no further harm is done to the environment in general.

Although we are almost too late to slow the rate of global warming, finding the right solution is critical. Everyone, from individuals to governments, must work together to find a solution to Global Warming. Some of the factors to consider are pollution control, population growth, and the use of natural resources.

One very important contribution you can make is to reduce your use of plastic. Plastic is the primary cause of global warming, and recycling it takes years. Another factor to consider is deforestation, which will aid in the control of global warming. More tree planting should be encouraged to green the environment. Certain rules should also govern industrialization. Building industries in green zones that affect plants and species should be prohibited.

Effects of Global Warming

Global warming is a real problem that many people want to disprove to gain political advantage. However, as global citizens, we must ensure that only the truth is presented in the media.

This decade has seen a significant impact from global warming. The two most common phenomena observed are glacier retreat and arctic shrinkage. Glaciers are rapidly melting. These are clear manifestations of climate change.

Another significant effect of global warming is the rise in sea level. Flooding is occurring in low-lying areas as a result of sea-level rise. Many countries have experienced extreme weather conditions. Every year, we have unusually heavy rain, extreme heat and cold, wildfires, and other natural disasters.

Similarly, as global warming continues, marine life is being severely impacted. This is causing the extinction of marine species as well as other problems. Furthermore, changes are expected in coral reefs, which will face extinction in the coming years. These effects will intensify in the coming years, effectively halting species expansion. Furthermore, humans will eventually feel the negative effects of Global Warming.

Also Read: Concept of Sustainable Development

Sample Essays on Global Warming

Here are some sample essays on Global Warming:

Essay on Global Warming Paragraph in 100 – 150 words

Global Warming is caused by the increase of carbon dioxide levels in the earth’s atmosphere and is a result of human activities that have been causing harm to our environment for the past few centuries now. Global Warming is something that can’t be ignored and steps have to be taken to tackle the situation globally. The average temperature is constantly rising by 1.5 degrees Celsius over the last few years.

The best method to prevent future damage to the earth, cutting down more forests should be banned and Afforestation should be encouraged. Start by planting trees near your homes and offices, participate in events, and teach the importance of planting trees. It is impossible to undo the damage but it is possible to stop further harm.

Essay on Global Warming in 250 Words

Over a long period, it is observed that the temperature of the earth is increasing. This affected wildlife, animals, humans, and every living organism on earth. Glaciers have been melting, and many countries have started water shortages, flooding, and erosion and all this is because of global warming.

No one can be blamed for global warming except for humans. Human activities such as gases released from power plants, transportation, and deforestation have increased gases such as carbon dioxide, CFCs, and other pollutants in the earth’s atmosphere. The main question is how can we control the current situation and build a better world for future generations. It starts with little steps by every individual.

Start using cloth bags made from sustainable materials for all shopping purposes, instead of using high-watt lights use energy-efficient bulbs, switch off the electricity, don’t waste water, abolish deforestation and encourage planting more trees. Shift the use of energy from petroleum or other fossil fuels to wind and solar energy. Instead of throwing out the old clothes donate them to someone so that it is recycled.

Donate old books, don’t waste paper. Above all, spread awareness about global warming. Every little thing a person does towards saving the earth will contribute in big or small amounts. We must learn that 1% effort is better than no effort. Pledge to take care of Mother Nature and speak up about global warming.

Essay on Global Warming in 500 Words

Global warming isn’t a prediction, it is happening! A person denying it or unaware of it is in the most simple terms complicit. Do we have another planet to live on? Unfortunately, we have been bestowed with this one planet only that can sustain life yet over the years we have turned a blind eye to the plight it is in. Global warming is not an abstract concept but a global phenomenon occurring ever so slowly even at this moment. Global Warming is a phenomenon that is occurring every minute resulting in a gradual increase in the Earth’s overall climate. Brought about by greenhouse gases that trap the solar radiation in the atmosphere, global warming can change the entire map of the earth, displacing areas, flooding many countries, and destroying multiple lifeforms. Extreme weather is a direct consequence of global warming but it is not an exhaustive consequence. There are virtually limitless effects of global warming which are all harmful to life on earth. The sea level is increasing by 0.12 inches per year worldwide. This is happening because of the melting of polar ice caps because of global warming. This has increased the frequency of floods in many lowland areas and has caused damage to coral reefs. The Arctic is one of the worst-hit areas affected by global warming. Air quality has been adversely affected and the acidity of the seawater has also increased causing severe damage to marine life forms. Severe natural disasters are brought about by global warming which has had dire effects on life and property. As long as mankind produces greenhouse gases, global warming will continue to accelerate. The consequences are felt at a much smaller scale which will increase to become drastic shortly. The power to save the day lies in the hands of humans, the need is to seize the day. Energy consumption should be reduced on an individual basis. Fuel-efficient cars and other electronics should be encouraged to reduce the wastage of energy sources. This will also improve air quality and reduce the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Global warming is an evil that can only be defeated when fought together. It is better late than never. If we all take steps today, we will have a much brighter future tomorrow. Global warming is the bane of our existence and various policies have come up worldwide to fight it but that is not enough. The actual difference is made when we work at an individual level to fight it. Understanding its import now is crucial before it becomes an irrevocable mistake. Exterminating global warming is of utmost importance and each one of us is as responsible for it as the next.

Also Read: Essay on Library: 100, 200 and 250 Words

Essay on Global Warming UPSC

Always hear about global warming everywhere, but do we know what it is? The evil of the worst form, global warming is a phenomenon that can affect life more fatally. Global warming refers to the increase in the earth’s temperature as a result of various human activities. The planet is gradually getting hotter and threatening the existence of lifeforms on it. Despite being relentlessly studied and researched, global warming for the majority of the population remains an abstract concept of science. It is this concept that over the years has culminated in making global warming a stark reality and not a concept covered in books. Global warming is not caused by one sole reason that can be curbed. Multifarious factors cause global warming most of which are a part of an individual’s daily existence. Burning of fuels for cooking, in vehicles, and for other conventional uses, a large amount of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide, and methane amongst many others is produced which accelerates global warming. Rampant deforestation also results in global warming as lesser green cover results in an increased presence of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere which is a greenhouse gas. Finding a solution to global warming is of immediate importance. Global warming is a phenomenon that has to be fought unitedly. Planting more trees can be the first step that can be taken toward warding off the severe consequences of global warming. Increasing the green cover will result in regulating the carbon cycle. There should be a shift from using nonrenewable energy to renewable energy such as wind or solar energy which causes less pollution and thereby hinder the acceleration of global warming. Reducing energy needs at an individual level and not wasting energy in any form is the most important step to be taken against global warming. The warning bells are tolling to awaken us from the deep slumber of complacency we have slipped into. Humans can fight against nature and it is high time we acknowledged that. With all our scientific progress and technological inventions, fighting off the negative effects of global warming is implausible. We have to remember that we do not inherit the earth from our ancestors but borrow it from our future generations and the responsibility lies on our shoulders to bequeath them a healthy planet for life to exist.

Climate Change and Global Warming Essay

Global Warming and Climate Change are two sides of the same coin. Both are interrelated with each other and are two issues of major concern worldwide. Greenhouse gases released such as carbon dioxide, CFCs, and other pollutants in the earth’s atmosphere cause Global Warming which leads to climate change. Black holes have started to form in the ozone layer that protects the earth from harmful ultraviolet rays.

Human activities have created climate change and global warming. Industrial waste and fumes are the major contributors to global warming.

Another factor affecting is the burning of fossil fuels, deforestation and also one of the reasons for climate change. Global warming has resulted in shrinking mountain glaciers in Antarctica, Greenland, and the Arctic and causing climate change. Switching from the use of fossil fuels to energy sources like wind and solar.

When buying any electronic appliance buy the best quality with energy savings stars. Don’t waste water and encourage rainwater harvesting in your community.

Tips to Write an Essay

Writing an effective essay needs skills that few people possess and even fewer know how to implement. While writing an essay can be an assiduous task that can be unnerving at times, some key pointers can be inculcated to draft a successful essay. These involve focusing on the structure of the essay, planning it out well, and emphasizing crucial details.

Mentioned below are some pointers that can help you write better structure and more thoughtful essays that will get across to your readers:

Prepare an outline for the essay to ensure continuity and relevance and no break in the structure of the essay
Decide on a thesis statement that will form the basis of your essay. It will be the point of your essay and help readers understand your contention
Follow the structure of an introduction, a detailed body followed by a conclusion so that the readers can comprehend the essay in a particular manner without any dissonance.
Make your beginning catchy and include solutions in your conclusion to make the essay insightful and lucrative to read
Reread before putting it out and add your flair to the essay to make it more personal and thereby unique and intriguing for readers

Also Read: I Love My India Essay: 100 and 500+ Words in English for School Students

Ans. Both natural and man-made factors contribute to global warming. The natural one also contains methane gas, volcanic eruptions, and greenhouse gases. Deforestation, mining, livestock raising, burning fossil fuels, and other man-made causes are next.

Ans. The government and the general public can work together to stop global warming. Trees must be planted more often, and deforestation must be prohibited. Auto usage needs to be curbed, and recycling needs to be promoted.

Ans. Switching to renewable energy sources , adopting sustainable farming, transportation, and energy methods, and conserving water and other natural resources.

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Digvijay Singh

Having 2+ years of experience in educational content writing, withholding a Bachelor's in Physical Education and Sports Science and a strong interest in writing educational content for students enrolled in domestic and foreign study abroad programmes. I believe in offering a distinct viewpoint to the table, to help students deal with the complexities of both domestic and foreign educational systems. Through engaging storytelling and insightful analysis, I aim to inspire my readers to embark on their educational journeys, whether abroad or at home, and to make the most of every learning opportunity that comes their way.

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Yes, There Has Been Progress on Climate. No, It’s Not Nearly Enough.

By Brad Plumer and Nadja Popovich Oct. 25, 2021

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Global greenhouse gas emissions in gigatonnes CO 2 -eq. per year, with projections of warming above pre-industrial levels by 2100

In 2014, before the Paris climate agreement, the world was on track to heat up nearly 4 degrees Celsius (7.2 degrees Fahrenheit) by the end of the century, an outcome widely seen as catastrophic.

Today, thanks to rapid growth in clean energy, humanity has started to bend the emissions curve. Current policies put us on pace for roughly 3 degrees Celsius of warming by 2100 — a better result, but still devastating.

Many countries have vowed to slash emissions even faster. So far those promises exist mostly on paper, but if nations follow through, the world could potentially limit total warming to around 2 to 2.4 degrees Celsius by 2100.

Yet scientists and world leaders increasingly say even that much warming is too risky. To hold global temperature rise to a safer limit of 1.5 degrees Celsius, far more drastic action is needed.

As world leaders gather in Glasgow for a United Nations climate summit next week , the focus will be on one crucial number: How many degrees hotter will the Earth get? And how do we keep that number as small as possible?

Humans have so far warmed the planet 1.1 degrees Celsius (2 degrees Fahrenheit) since preindustrial times, mainly by burning coal, oil and gas for energy, and by cutting down forests, which help absorb the planet-warming emissions created by fossil fuel use. Humanity is already paying a high price : This year alone, blistering heat waves killed hundreds of people in the Pacific Northwest, floods devastated Germany and China, and wildfires raged out of control in Siberia, Turkey and California.

How much worse could things get?

To figure that out, scientists at Climate Action Tracker , a research group, regularly scrutinize all the climate and energy policies that countries have enacted worldwide. They then estimate the effect of these policies on future greenhouse gas emissions and calculate how much of a temperature increase the world can expect.

It’s a simple measure of progress to date in combating climate change. And the data offers reasons for both hope and alarm.

How Things Improved

In 2014, Climate Action Tracker estimated that the world was on track for nearly 4 degrees Celsius of warming by 2100, compared with preindustrial levels.

Warming of 4 degrees has long been deemed a worst-case scenario. One assessment by the World Bank explored the risks, such as cascading global crop failures, and bluntly concluded that 4 degrees “simply must not be allowed to occur.”

This year, however, Climate Action Tracker painted a more optimistic picture, because countries have started doing more to restrain their emissions. Current policies put the world on pace for roughly 2.9 degrees Celsius of warming by 2100. (That’s a best estimate: the potential range is between 2.1 degrees and 3.9 degrees Celsius.)

The United Nations will release its own analysis of global climate efforts Tuesday, though it has reached broadly similar conclusions in the past.

“There has been a genuine shift over the past decade,” said Niklas Höhne, a German climatologist and founding partner of NewClimate Institute, which created the Climate Action Tracker. “You can say that progress has been too slow, that it’s still not enough, and I agree with all that. But we do see real movement.”

There are several reasons for the improved outlook.

In 2015, 195 nations signed the Paris climate agreement , which for the first time required every country to submit a plan for curbing emissions. While the plans were voluntary, they helped spur new actions: The European Union tightened caps on industrial emissions. China and India ramped up renewable energy. Egypt scaled back subsidies for fossil fuels. Indonesia began cracking down on illegal deforestation.

Along the way, there was backsliding. The Trump administration rolled back some major climate policies. Deforestation in Brazil surged under President Jair Bolsonaro.

But, on the whole, countries are doing more than they were a decade ago.

Just as importantly, clean energy advanced far more quickly than predicted. A decade ago, solar panels, wind turbines and electric vehicles were often seen as niche technologies, too expensive for widespread use. But costs have plummeted .

Today, wind and solar power are the cheapest new source of electricity in most markets. Electric vehicle sales are setting records. Automakers like Ford and General Motors are now preparing to phase down sales of gasoline-powered cars in the years ahead.

At the same time, coal power, a major source of emissions, has begun to wane. A decade ago, China and India were building new coal-burning power plants nearly every week. But as cleaner energy alternatives have matured and climate activists have ratcheted up pressure on banks and governments to stop financing coal, that pace has slowed: After the Paris agreement, one recent study found , 76 percent of proposals for new coal plants have been canceled.

All of this has made a difference. Between 2000 and 2010, global emissions rose 3 percent per year on average. But between 2011 and 2019, emissions grew more slowly , at roughly 1 percent per year.

The International Energy Agency now projects that global carbon dioxide emissions could potentially peak by the mid-2020s, then start gradually declining.

That would put the world on pace to warm a bit less than 3 degrees by 2100, although there are still uncertainties around whether current policies will work as intended and how sensitive Earth’s climate actually is to our greenhouse gas emissions.

Still, scientists warn, that number isn’t something to celebrate. Yes, 3 degrees is far less nightmarish than 4 degrees. But it is immensely dangerous.

Consider the vast ice sheets atop Greenland and West Antarctica, which together hold enough water to raise global sea levels nearly 40 feet and sink many of the world’s great coastal cities. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change recently warned that at sustained global warming levels between 2 degrees and 3 degrees, those ice sheets could melt irreversibly for thousands of years until they are almost entirely gone, condemning future generations to massive, relentless sea-level rise for centuries to come.

“We know there are these big tipping points in the climate system, and once we get past them, it’s too late to go back,” said Andrea Dutton, a climate scientist at University of Wisconsin-Madison who co-authored a study finding that a 3 degree trajectory could lead to an abrupt jump in the rate of Antarctic melt as early as 2060.

Promises on Paper

As governments have awakened to the danger, they have vowed to do more. But so far, their promises often just exist on paper.

Ahead of the Glasgow summit, at least 140 countries have formally updated their plans to curb emissions through 2030, according to the World Resources Institute. The United States and European Union pledged to pursue deeper cuts. Argentina and South Africa promised to slow future growth in fossil-fuel use. But other major emitters, like China and India, have yet to update their short-term plans.

If countries follow through on these new pledges, Climate Action Tracker estimates, the world could potentially get on track to hold warming to around 2.4 degrees Celsius by 2100, although temperatures would keep rising thereafter.

But that’s a big if.

Many pledges aren’t yet backed up by concrete policies, and countries aren’t all on track to meet them. One recent study by the Rhodium Group found that even if the Biden administration implemented a sweeping package of climate measures — including hundreds of billions of dollars in clean energy spending that remains stalled in Congress — and individual states adopted tougher rules of their own, the United States would barely stay on track to meet its target.

And that’s not the hardest part. In recent years, more than 50 countries plus the European Union have formally vowed to get to “net zero” emissions, which is essentially a promise to stop adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere altogether by a certain date. The United States said it would get to net zero by 2050. China said it would strive to get there by 2060.

In theory, those goals could have a powerful impact. Climate Action Tracker estimates that if every country met its net zero pledge, the world could potentially limit warming to around 2 degrees Celsius by the end of the century.

But these plans would require extremely rapid reductions in fossil-fuel use from power plants, factories and vehicles, as well as potentially new technology to pull carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. Many net zero goals remain largely aspirational, and most governments have not yet laid out credible plans for achieving them.

“You can see the glass as half-full or half-empty,” said Dr. Höhne. “The half-full story is that countries have good intentions and are sending the right signals to investors. The half-empty story is that none of the countries that have pledged to go to zero have sufficient short-term policies to really put themselves on track.”

A Narrow Path Forward

Even as humanity has chipped away at the climate problem over the past decade, scientists have made progress, too. And their findings are dire: They have gathered stronger evidence that even small temperature increases can be powerfully damaging.

In other words, the goal posts are moving.

When the Paris agreement was signed, nations agreed that they should keep total global warming “well below” 2 degrees Celsius and make a good-faith effort to stay at 1.5 degrees. But in the years since, a slew of studies have found that 2 degrees of warming is vastly more harmful than 1.5 degrees .

That extra half a degree sounds small, but it could mean tens of millions more people worldwide exposed to life-threatening heat waves, water shortages and coastal flooding. Half a degree may mean the difference between a world with coral reefs and Arctic summer sea ice, and a world without them.

“We’re already seeing today, at just 1 degree of warming, that certain societal systems are more vulnerable to disruption than we previously thought,” said Joeri Rogelj, director of research at Imperial College London’s Grantham Institute for Climate Change and the Environment.

In response, a growing number of world leaders, including President Biden, have said that the world should hold to 1.5 degrees of warming, although some countries like China and India have not embraced the stricter goal.

Yet 1.5 degrees is a vastly harder target to hit than 2 degrees or 3 degrees. It’s not nearly enough for global emissions to peak in the next few years and then decline gradually. Instead, global fossil-fuel emissions would have to plunge roughly in half this decade and then reach net zero by around 2050.

This year, the International Energy Agency laid out a road map for what that might look like. By 2030, electric vehicles would have to make up more than half of new car sales globally, up from just 5 percent today. By 2035, wealthy countries would have to shut down virtually all fossil-fuel power plants in favor of cleaner technologies like wind, solar or nuclear power. By 2040, all of the world’s remaining coal plants would have to be retired or retrofitted with technology to capture their carbon emissions and bury them underground. New technologies would be needed to clean up sectors like air travel.

The agency estimates that current policies worldwide will deliver only one-fifth of the emission cuts needed this decade to stay on track for 1.5 degrees. Without an immediate and rapid acceleration of action, that climate goal could be out of reach within a few short years.

“The pathway is extremely narrow,” said Fatih Birol, the executive director of the International Energy Agency. “We really don’t have much time left to shift course.”

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As the world’s coral reefs suffer a fourth global bleaching event, heat stress in the Caribbean is accumulating even earlier than it did in 2023, the previous record year for the region, according to data by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Florida’s state government will no longer be required to consider climate change when crafting energy policy under legislation signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican.

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The ‘97% climate consensus’ is over. Now it’s well above 99% (and the evidence is even stronger than that)

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Despite the overwhelming evidence , it’s still common to see politicians , media commentators or social media users cast doubt on the role of humans in driving climate change.

But this denialism is now almost nonexistent among climate scientists, as a study released this month confirms. US researchers examined the peer-reviewed literature and found more than 99% of climate scientists now endorse the evidence for human-induced climate change.

That’s even higher than the 97% reported by an influential 2013 study , which has become a widely cited statistic by both climate change deniers and those who accept the evidence.

Why has the needle evidently shifted even more firmly in favour of the evidence-based consensus? Or, to put it another way, what happened to the 3% of researchers who rejected the consensus of human caused climate change? Is this change purely because of the growing weight of evidence published over the past few years?

Unpicking the polls

We must first ask whether the two studies are directly comparable. The answer is yes. The latest study has reexamined the literature published since 2012, and is based on the same methods as the 2013 study , albeit with some important refinements.

Read more: Consensus confirmed: over 90% of climate scientists believe we're causing global warming

Both studies searched the Web of Science database – an independent worldwide repository of scientific paper citations – using the keywords “global climate change” and “global warming”. However, the recent study added “climate change” to the other two keyword searches, because the authors found that most climate-contrarian papers would not have been returned with only the two original terms.

The 2013 study examined 11,944 climate research papers and found almost one-third of them expressed a position on the cause of global warming. Of these 4,014 papers, 97% endorsed the consensus position that humans are the cause, 1% were uncertain, and 2% explicitly rejected it.

A 2015 review examined 38 climate-contrarian papers published over the preceding decade, and identified a range of methodological flaws and sources of bias.

One of the reviewers commented that “every single one of those analyses had an error – in their assumptions, methodology, or analysis – that, when corrected, brought their results into line with the scientific consensus”.

For example, many of the contrarian papers had “ cherrypicked ” results that supported their conclusion, while ignoring important context and other data sources that contradicted it. Some of them simply ignored fundamental physics.

The 2015 reviewers also made the important point that “science is never settled and that both mainstream and contrarian papers must be subjected to sustained scrutiny”. This is the cornerstone of the scientific method , and few if any climate scientists would disagree with this statement.

Separating the human influence from the natural

The recently published Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) Synthesis Report , says “it is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land”, and warns that the Paris Agreement goals of 1.5°C and 2°C above pre-industrial levels will be exceeded during this century without dramatic emissions reductions.

In reaching this conclusion, it is important to distinguish between changes caused by human activities altering the atmosphere’s chemistry, and climate variability caused by natural factors.

These natural variations include small changes in the Sun’s energy output due to sunspots and solar flares, infrequent volcanic eruptions , and the effects of El Niño weather patterns in the Pacific Ocean.

Excluding these natural variations, Earth’s surface temperature was generally stable from about 2,000 to 1,000 years ago. After that, the planet cooled by about 0.3°C over several centuries , before the advent of fossil fuel-based industrialisation in the 1800s.

One study identified 12 major volcanic eruptions from 100 to 1200 CE, compared with 17 eruptions from 1200 to 1900 CE. Hence, heightened volcanic activity over roughly the past 800 years was associated with a general global cooling before the industrial revolution.

Current rates of global warming are unprecedented in more than 2,000 years and temperatures now exceed the warmest (multi-century) period in more than 100,000 years . Global average surface temperature for the decade from 2011-20 was about 1.1°C higher than in 1850-1900. Each of the past four decades has been warmer than any preceding decade since 1850, when reliable weather observations began.

Read more: 99.999% certainty humans are driving global warming: new study

Researchers can separate human and natural factors in the modern global temperature record. This involves a process called hindcasting , in which a climate model is run backwards in time to simulate human and natural factors, and then compared with the observed data to see which combination of factors most accurately recreates the real world.

If human factors are removed from the data set and only volcanic and solar factors are included, then global average surface temperatures since 1950 should have remained similar to those over the preceding 100 years. But of course they haven’t.

The evidence, and the scientific consensus on it, are both clearer than ever.

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Do scientists agree on climate change?

Yes, the vast majority of actively publishing climate scientists – 97 percent – agree that humans are causing global warming and climate change. Most of the leading science organizations around the world have issued public statements expressing this, including international and U.S. science academies, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and a whole host of reputable scientific bodies around the world. A list of these organizations is provided here .

Scientific consensus: Earth's climate is warming
“The scientific consensus on climate change,” N. Oreskes, Science, Vol. 306 no. 5702, p. 1686, doi: 10.1126/science.1103618 (2004).
“Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature,” J. Cook et al. , Environ. Res. Lett., 8 024024, doi:10.1088/1748-9326/8/2/024024 (2013).

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" Consensus on consensus: a synthesis of consensus estimates on human-caused global warming Environ ," J. Cook et al ., Res. Lett. 11 (2016) 048002, pp 1–7, doi:10.1088/1748-9326/11/4/048002 (2016).
" Examining the Scientific Consensus on Climate Change ," P. Doran et al., EOS , Vol. 90, Issue 3, Pages 22–23, doi: 10.1029/2009EO030002 (2009).
" Expert credibility in climate change ," W. Anderegg et al. , PNAS , Vol. 107 no. 27, 12107–12109, doi: 10.1073/pnas.1003187107 (2010).
" Meteorologists' Views About Global Warming: A Survey of American Meteorological Society Professional Members ," N. Stenhouse et al. , Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society , Volume 95 No. 7, pp 1029–1040, doi: 10.1175/ BAMS-D-13-00091.1 (2014).
" Scientists’ Views about Attribution of Global Warming ," B. Verheggen et al. , Environ. Sci. Technol. , 48 (16), pp 8963–8971, doi: 10.1021/es501998e (2014).
" The climate change consensus extends beyond climate scientists ," J.S. Carlton et al. , Environ. Res. Lett. 10 (2015) 094025, pp 1–12, doi:10.1088/1748-9326/10/9/094025 (2015).

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Climate Change
Tim Pawlenty

Do scientists disagree about global warming?

Climate change has become a touchy subject in the Republican primary. Though some candidates once supported plans to reduce carbon emissions, such strategies have fallen out of favor with Republicans in recent years. Even acknowledging that human beings are causing climate change can be politically problematic for some Republicans.

Our colleagues at the Miami Herald asked Republican presidential candidate and former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty about his views on climate change in an interview on Aug. 3, 2011. His response piqued our interest: "Well, there’s definitely climate change. The more interesting question is how much is a result of natural causes and how much, if any, is attributable to human behavior. And that’s what the scientific dispute is about," said Pawlenty. "It’s something we have to look to the science on. The weight of the evidence is that most of it, maybe all of it, is because of natural causes... There’s lots of layers to it. But at least as to any potential man-made contribution to it, it’s fair to say the science is in dispute." We divided Pawlenty’s answer into his two essential claims: • Evidence points toward climate change being primarily a natural, rather than man-made, phenomenon. • The science about the causes of global climate change is in dispute. To check the first claim, we turned to the most recent report by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a scientific body considered the leading international organization on climate science. "Most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations," the 2007 report states. "The observed widespread warming of the atmosphere and ocean, together with ice mass loss, support the conclusion that it is extremely unlikely that global climate change of the past 50 years can be explained without external forcing, and very likely that it is not due to known natural causes alone." (External forcing refers to anything that changes the climate that is outside of the normal climate system.) In the United States, the U.S. Global Change Research Program coordinates and integrates federal research on climate. Its 2009 report mirrored the IPCC’s conclusions: "Observations show that warming of the climate is unequivocal. The global warming observed over the past 50 years is due primarily to human-induced emissions of heat-trapping gases. These emissions come mainly from the burning of fossil fuels (coal, oil, and gas), with important contributions from the clearing of forests, agricultural practices, and other activities." The IPCC report states that the period from 1995 to 2006 contains 11 of the 12 warmest years on record since instrumental measurement began in 1850. It concluded that global surface temperature rose 0.76 degrees Celsius from the end of the 19th century (1850-1899) to the beginning of the 21st (2001-2005). The U.S. Global Change Research Program’s report similarly found that the average global temperature increase by 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit since 1900. While these temperature changes may sound small, keep in mind that these are averages. The rise in temperature, and its visible effects, are more pronounced in certain parts of the world than in others. The polar ice sheets are particularly vulnerable to temperature increases. Greenland lost 36 to 60 cubic miles of ice from 2002 to 2006 while Antarctica lost 36 cubic miles of ice during roughly the same time period. Brian Soden, a professor of meteorology and physical oceanography at the University of Miami, was one of the many scientific contributors to the 2007 IPCC report. "The rise in global mean temperature since the 19th century may seem small, and projections of global mean warming over the next century range from 2 to 5 degrees Celsius," Soden said. "One way to put these numbers into perspective is to realize that the current climate is now only about 5 degrees Celsius warmer than it was during the last ‘glacial maximum’ (approximately 20,000 years ago) when ice covered much of North America extending all the way down to St Louis." If you’ve been following the debate recently, you may remember that climate research on temperature was called into question in 2009 when stolen e-mails from the Climatic Research United at the University of East Anglia were released on the Internet. Global warming skeptics said the e-mails showed climate researchers were manipulating data. But several inquiries debunked those allegations, including those conducted by the British Parliament , the U.S. Department of Commerce , Pennsylvania State University , and the InterAcademy Council . The inquiries found that while the scientists had made rude remarks about people who questioned climate change, they were not falsifying data. A few reports recommended greater transparency and sharing of climatic data, but the independent investigations exonerated the researchers of falsifying data. We looked into the work of the most prominent and best credentialed people who have questioned the IPCC’s conclusions on global warming. Generally speaking, even these scientists do not claim that humans are making no contribution at all to rising temperatures. Rather, they tend to make more nuanced points. They question whether carbon emissions alone are driving up temperatures, or whether other human activities contribute as well. They question whether extreme weather events such as storms or floods can be conclusively linked to rising temperatures. And, they question whether significant changes to public policy are necessary as a means of coping with rising temperatures. For Pawlenty’s second claim -- that there is dispute about the causes of climate change -- we decided to look at the opinions of world scientists about the issue. Several studies have attempted to quantify how much agreement there is among scientists when it comes to climate change. A 2010 study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences - the official publication of the United States National Academy of Sciences - found that out of 1,372 climate researchers surveyed, approximately 97 to 98 percent of those actively publishing in the field said they believe human beings are causing the climate change, which they term anthropogenic (i.e., man-made) climate change. It also concluded that "the relative climate expertise and scientiﬁc prominence" of the researchers unconvinced of man-made climate change are "substantially below that of the convinced researchers." An earlier survey published in the 2009 issue of Eos -- a publication of the American Geophysical Union -- surveyed scientists from a wide range of disciplines (approximately 3,146) and asked: "Do you think human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures?" Approximately 82 percent of the surveyed scientists answered yes to this question. Of those climate change specialists surveyed, 97.4 percent answered yes to this question. Climate change skeptics have their own petition, commonly called the Oregon petition, that has been endorsed by 31,000 signers opposing restrictions on carbon emissions. But that petition has been criticized for not checking the credentials of its signatories or proving that the signatories exist. To be clear, we’re not saying that no scientists dispute man-made climate change. When we contacted the Pawlenty campaign, they pointed us to several published pieces, such as writings by John R. Christy , who was counted as a dissenting researcher as part of the 2010 study from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences . But these skeptics seem to be a small -- even tiny -- minority, in contrast to Pawlenty’s comments suggesting significant disagreement. Many of the skeptics agree that climate change is occurring and that human activities play a part. But they disagree with some of the conclusions formulated in mainstream climate science. To summarize: Based on our research, there is very little dispute in the scientific community, especially among climate specialists, on whether climate change is primarily caused by natural or man-made forces. The overwhelming majority of scientists polled feel that human activity is the primary driver of climate change. Also, based on scientific studies by the IPCC and others, global warming over the past 50 years has been primarily driven by human activity. Based upon the preponderance of evidence we conclude that Tim Pawlenty’s claims are both incorrect and misleading to the public, who may not be familiar with the science behind climate change. It is not "fair to say the science is in dispute," as if there are good arguments on both sides. Rather, there is significant scientific consensus that human beings are contributing to global warming. We rate his statement False.

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Editor's Note: Pawlenty announced he was dropping out of the presidential race on Aug. 14. Also, this report was changed to reflect a more expansive definition of external forcing.

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Miami Herald , interview with Tim Pawlenty , Aug. 3, 2011

IPCC Fourth Assessment Report: Climate Change 2007. Working Group I Report: " The Physical Science Basis ." U.S. Global Change Research Program, " Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States ," June 2009. NASA - Climate Change: How do we know? E-mail interview with Brian Soden, Professor of Meteorology & Physical Oceanography at the University of Miami. British House of Commons, The disclosure of climate data from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia , May 18, 2010 U.S. Department of Commerce, Inspector General’s Review of Stolen Emails Confirms No Evidence of Wrong-Doing by NOAA Climate Scientists , Feb. 24, 2011 Pennsylvania State University, Final Investigation Report Involving Dr. Michael E. Mann , June 4, 2010 BBC News, CRU climate scientists 'did not withhold data' , July 7, 2010 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, " Expert Credibility in Climate Change ," June 21, 2010. Eos, " Examining the Scientific Consensus on Climate Change ," Jan. 20, 2009. Oregon Petition Wall Street Journal, " My Nobel Moment ," Nov. 1, 2007. Mother Jones, " Q&A: Roger A. Pielke Sr. " Dec. 2008.

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Chewbacca and Han Solo from ‘Star Wars: Episode VII’. The best case made by climate contrarian scientists amounts to little more than ‘the Chewbacca defense’.

These are the best arguments from the 3% of climate scientist 'skeptics.' Really.

Contrarian climate scientist Roy Spencer summed up the contrarian case for a fossil fuel and tobacco-funded think tank

When I give a presentation and mention the 97% expert consensus on human-caused global warming , I’m often asked, “what’s the deal with the other 3%?”. These are the publishing climate scientists who argue that something other than humans is responsible for the majority of global warming, although their explanations are often contradictory and don’t withstand scientific scrutiny .

A few months ago, the world’s largest private sector coal company went to court, made its best scientific case against the 97% expert consensus, and lost . One of coal’s expert witnesses was University of Alabama at Huntsville climate scientist Roy Spencer - a controversial figure who once compared those with whom he disagreed to Nazis , and has expressed his love for Fox News .

Last week, Spencer wrote a white paper for the Texas Public Policy Institute (TPPI) outlining the contrarian case against climate concerns. TPPI is part of the web of denial , having received substantial funding from both the tobacco and fossil fuel industries , including $65,000 from ExxonMobil and at least $911,499 from Koch-related foundations since 1998, and over $3 million from “dark money” anonymizers Donors Trust and Donors Capital Fund.

Spencer’s arguments should of course be evaluated on their own merits, regardless of who commissioned them. However, it turns out that they have little merit on which to stand. The white paper is a classic example of a Gish Gallop – producing such a large volume of nonsense arguments that refuting all of them is too time-consuming. NASA Goddard director Gavin Schmidt rightly described Spencer’s paper as:

A great example of how making nonsense arguments undermines his whole point. Sad! https://t.co/kqY1czsH3S — Gavin Schmidt (@ClimateOfGavin) July 20, 2016

A mishmash of myths

Most of Spencer’s white paper consists of repeating a variety of long-debunked myths. It’s laid out in the form of 13 basic climate questions that Spencer tries to answer. Fortunately, SkepticalScience.com has a database of over 200 climate myths , and summaries of what the peer-reviewed scientific research says about each. This makes it possible to handle Spencer’s 13-point Gish Gallop by simply referring to the relevant myth rebuttals. So here we go:

1) ‘Carbon dioxide is a trace gas’ is rebutted as Myth #127 .

2) ‘Climate has changed before’ is addressed in Myth #2 , and climate scientist Michael Mann recently rebutted the myth that climate researchers ignore natural factors. Spencer’s misleading claims about temperatures of the past 2,000 years based on a paper by Henrik Ljungqvist are refuted in Myth #168 . Claims of hotter periods during that time than today are tackled in Myth #56 , and implications that the planet is magically warming because it used to be colder during the Little Ice Age in Myth #32 . Finally, the rebuttal to Myth #136 explains why we can’t just blame global warming on natural cycles.

3) The reliability of global temperature measurements is explained in Myth #6 .

4) Models used by the IPCC have accurately predicted global warming, as explained in the rebuttals to and Myth #229 , as well as an important paper published last year .

5) The net negative consequences of rapid global warming are outlined in the rebuttal to Myth #12 .

6) The warming over the past 18 years is discussed in the rebuttal to Myth #7 , and is clear from the record hot temperatures of the past 3 years .

7) The accuracy of climate models is covered under Myth #5 and in my book.

8) The sensitivity of the climate to the increasing greenhouse effect is addressed in Myth #30 , and the role of clouds in Myth #143 .

9) False claims about the 97% expert climate consensus are in Myth #3 and Myth #226 .

10) Claims of ‘slow’ ocean warming are refuted by the fact that it’s accumulating heat at a rate equivalent to 4 atomic bomb detonations per second , consistent with climate model predictions .

11) Spencer downplays the importance of our repeated breaking of temperature records, but we wouldn’t be breaking them without global warming .

12) On climate change causing extreme weather ( Myth #41 ), Spencer suggests that we shouldn’t worry about stronger hurricanes ( Myth #16 ), denies the record intensity of California’s current drought , and cherry picks sea ice ( Myth #157 ) and snow cover data ( Myth #159 ).

13) Spencer ends his paper with the claim that the 97% of climate research that’s consistent with the expert consensus is all politically biased. This is ironic given that Spencer has previously said:

I view my job a little like a legislator, supported by the taxpayer, to protect the interests of the taxpayer and to minimize the role of government.

The best case against climate concern is really bad

All in all, Spencer managed to cram about 24 climate myths into a 13-point white paper. Most importantly, as Schmidt noted, the bulk of those myths served no purpose.

Just consider Spencer’s very first argument. No scientist should ever claim that carbon pollution is benign because it’s only present in the atmosphere in trace amounts. For example, arsenic can be deadly if present in trace amounts in water; Spencer probably wouldn’t drink from a water source with 400 ppm of arsenic. This is an easily-refuted, scientifically-useless argument whose sole purpose seems to be fooling non-experts. It’s the climate version of the Chewbacca defense .

In the Peabody Energy case, the judge ruled that the preponderance of evidence did not support Spencer or his fellow coal expert witnesses. Without strong evidence supporting their arguments, climate contrarians often resort to Gish Gallops to win arguments. In fact, the RationalWiki page on Gish Gallops lists another climate contrarian, Christoper Monckton among the well-known “ abusers of this technique ,” alongside Donald Trump.

In short, if there were a valid case against the urgent need for climate action, contrarians’ best experts wouldn’t have to scrape 24 long-debunked myths from the bottom of the oil barrel.

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view all topics > Climate change

Humans are causing global warming

Chair of the United Nations Sustainable Development Group Achim Steiner speaks during an exclusive interview in Istanbul, Turkiye on March 21, 2024.

Hakan Akgun/Anadolu via Getty Images

CLIMATEWIRE | NEW YORK — The United Nations Development Programme launched a new program Tuesday that aims to galvanize countries around stronger climate action — and keep global warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius.

Known as Climate Promise 2025, the plan centers on strengthening the carbon-cutting pledges that countries will update next year under the Paris climate agreement. It’s the latest stage of UNDP’s Climate Promise program , which worked with 128 countries on the 2020 round of pledges — known as nationally determined contributions, or NDCs.

“The next two years stand as one of the best chances we have as a global community to course correct our collective path and ensure warming stays below 1.5 degrees Celsius, staving off the worst effects of climate change,” said Achim Steiner, UNDP administrator, at an event launching the initiative in New York on Tuesday.

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Yet scientists warn that the 1.5-degree target — the Paris Agreement’s most ambitious goal — is already all but out of reach. Global efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions aren’t happening fast enough, and many experts say it’s virtually certain that the world will at least temporarily overshoot that threshold.

It’s the latest example of a growing divide between the public messaging from many world leaders and the warnings from scientists that a breach of the 1.5-degree target is already imminent. The disconnect raises questions about how — and whether — world leaders should communicate the growing possibility of an overshoot.

“Sooner or later, policymakers will have to embrace the ‘overshoot story’ if they want to stick to 1.5C,” said Oliver Geden, a climate policy expert at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, in an email to POLITICO's E&E News.

If world leaders accept the likelihood of an overshoot, they can begin to consider ways to reverse it, Geden added. It’s possible for the world to temporarily exceed the 1.5-degree target and later use technological means to bring global temperatures back down — for instance, by drawing carbon dioxide back out of the atmosphere, in a strategy known as “negative emissions.”

Most potential global cooling strategies are still unproven at large scales, making them an uncertain solution. It’s not clear any of the technologies will ever be feasible at all, Geden said.

But "negative emissions" strategies are among the only methods that could keep the 1.5-degree target alive after an overshoot.

That means policymakers “would need to plan for and to communicate that the world needs to reach net-negative CO2 emissions after reaching net-zero around 2050,” Geden said.

But other experts argue that public messaging around the 1.5-degree target shouldn’t change, even if overshoot becomes unavoidable. The world must still continue to rapidly reduce greenhouse gas emissions to keep as close to the original target as possible.

“You need to do the same things whether you're aiming for 1.5 or for 2 [degrees],” said Laura Pereira, a researcher at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa. “It’s just that if you act now and do it rapidly enough, you can do 1.5.”

Some experts also worry that declaring an overshoot inevitable could also potentially hamper the momentum of global climate action plans.

“As soon as you throw your hands up in the air and say, 'Oh, we’re going to overshoot,' you're not going to have those hard discussions about what really needs to change,” Pereira said.

‘Becoming inevitable’

The debate is likely to intensify as the 1.5 degree threshold draws closer.

Global emissions would have to peak by 2025 and then fall a staggering 42 percent by 2030 in order to keep warming below 1.5 degrees, according to the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the world’s top authority on global warming. The world would then need to hit net-zero emissions around 2050.

“Regarding the reachability of the 1.5ºC target, truly transformative action is needed to still be able to achieve the 1.5ºC goal without an at least temporary overshoot,” said Nico Wunderling, a scientist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, in an email.

Human societies can only emit a limited amount of additional carbon without overshooting the target, Wunderling added, and research suggests the planet is likely to burn through that budget within the next five years if greenhouse gas emissions don’t swiftly and dramatically drop.

So while it’s not impossible, he said, it’s “extremely ambitious” for the world to reach net-zero emissions in time to avoid 1.5 degrees of warming.

The world could still limit warming to 1.5 degrees after a short period of overshooting the target, he said. But the impacts of climate change worsen with every fraction of a degree the planet warms. And some consequences, like sea-level rise or plant and animal extinctions, can’t be easily reversed once they’ve happened, even if global temperatures later fall.

So if the world does blow through 1.5 degrees, scientists say, it’s crucial to limit the overshoot as much as possible.

That’s a growing concern among climate experts. Scientists have quietly warned for years that the world is unlikely to meet the 1.5-degree target . But their message has grown more urgent in the last few years.

Scientists were candid about the impending risks during their presentation of the third and final installment of the IPCC’s most recent major assessment report in April 2022.

“It is almost inevitable that we will at least temporarily overshoot 1.5,” Jim Skea, an energy expert at Imperial College London and co-chair of the IPCC working group that prepared the report, said at a 2022 virtual presentation of the findings.

Another U.N. report in 2022 warned that countries' carbon-cutting pledges were too weak and, as of that moment, there was “no credible pathway” to 1.5 C . And the 2023 emissions gap report , released in November, reiterated that failing to sufficiently reduce emissions over the next six years will make it “impossible to limit warming to 1.5C with no or limited overshoot.”

In December, leading international scientists presented an annual report to the U.N. on the year’s top climate insights. It concluded that overshooting the 1.5-degree target is “becoming inevitable.”

Immediate, radical and transformative action could technically still keep the target alive, the report noted. But the diminishing probability means that world leaders must also work to minimize overshoot as much as possible.

“Governments, corporations and other actors must now focus on minimizing the magnitude and duration of overshoot, while still acting to avoid it,” the report warns.

Keeping the target alive

U.N. messaging remains focused on staying below 1.5 degrees — period.

“We believe it is worth trying to bring the world together through nationally determined contributions to a scenario where 1.5 C remains at least within the realm of possibility,” said Steiner, UNDP’s administrator, at Tuesday’s Climate Promise launch.

The new initiative aspires to bring the next round of national pledges in line with the IPCC’s requirements for staying under 1.5 degrees. The plan takes a three-pronged approach, aiming to help countries scale up their ambition, accelerate their progress and increase the inclusivity of their climate plans, acknowledging the disproportionate impacts of global warming on Indigenous communities and other vulnerable populations.

“It’s make or break for the 1.5-degree limit,” said U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres at Tuesday’s launch event. “Today, humanity spews out over 40 gigatons of carbon dioxide every year. At this rate, the planet will soon be pushed past the 1.5-degree limit. Countries’ ambitious new national climate plans — which are due next year — are essential to avert this calamity.”

When the Paris Agreement was first adopted in 2015, scientists estimated that the world was on track for about 3.5 degrees of global warming, said Cassie Flynn, UNDP’s global director of climate change, at Tuesday’s launch. But the world has made progress since then — the current Paris climate pledges are consistent with warming of around 2.5 degrees.

The next round of national contributions could still bring that trajectory down by another degree, she said.

Technically speaking, the world could cut emissions in line with keeping global warming under 1.5 degrees. But that would require a Herculean overhaul of the global economy in record time, an unprecedented feat in human history.

Many scientists say that scenario is unlikely. But the fact that hitting the target is still technically feasible — at least for a few more years — keeps the idea of avoiding overshoot alive for now.

“The goal of staying under 1.5 degrees is alive until overshoot,” Pereira said. “You can always change things fundamentally.”

Scientists Stage Worldwide Climate Change Protests After IPCC Report

Over 1,000 scientists from 25 countries took part in the Scientist Rebellion’s demonstrations last week

Margaret Osborne

Daily Correspondent

Protesters in Berlin wear white lab coats and hold a sign

Over 1,000 scientists from 25 different countries staged protests last week following the release of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s new report. The report warned that rapid and deep cuts to greenhouse gas emissions are necessary by 2025 to avoid catastrophic climate effects.

The group, called the Scientist Rebellion, writes in a letter that “current actions and plans are grossly inadequate, and even these obligations are not being met.” Their protests “highlight the urgency and injustice of the climate and ecological crisis,” per a statement from the organization.

In Los Angeles, scientists including Peter Kalmus, a NASA climate scientist with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, chained themselves to the JP Morgan Chase building.

“We’ve been trying to warn you guys for so many decades,” Kalmus says, his voice shaking. “The scientists of the world have been being ignored. And it’s gotta stop. We’re going to lose everything.”

They were met by about 100 police officers in riot gear and arrested, reports Salon ’s Eric Schank.

@moreperfectunion LAPD met four scientists chained to Chase Bank with riot gear and arrested them during a peaceful civil disobedience for climate urgency #nasa #climate #fyp #foryou #scientist #extinctionrebellion ♬ original sound - More Perfect Union

Scientists historically have had differing opinions about becoming activists on topics related to their work, but that has started to change in recent years, reports Chelsea Harvey for E&E News .

Kalmus has written several opinion pieces in the Guardian about climate change, calling for the end of the fossil fuel industry and a switch to renewables.

“It’s now the eleventh hour and I feel terrified for my kids, and terrified for humanity,” he writes in a Guardian op-ed. “I feel deep grief over the loss of forests and corals and diminishing biodiversity. But I’ll keep fighting as hard as I can for this Earth, no matter how bad it gets, because it can always get worse. And it will continue to get worse until we end the fossil fuel industry and the exponential quest for ever more profit at the expense of everything else.”

Scientists around the world expressed similar fears during protests last week, and demanded rapid action to address climate change from their governments.

Scientist Rebellion protesters in Washington, D.C. chained themselves to the White House fence. Spanish scientists threw fake blood over the facade of the National Congress. Panamanian scientists staged demonstrations at various embassies, and German protesters glued themselves to a bridge. In Malawi, scientists held a teach-in at Lilongwe University of Agriculture and Natural Resources, per the Scientist Rebellion statement.

Protesters from Scientist Rebellion doused the outside of the Spanish Parliament in red liquid on Wednesday. The act was part of a number of direct actions organized in 25 different countries to convince world governments to take more aggressive action against the climate crisis. pic.twitter.com/mhGKB2Ld9i — NowThis (@nowthisnews) April 7, 2022

“Listen to the scientists,” Amwanika Sharon, a Scientist Rebellion member protesting oil exploration and refinery construction in Uganda, says to Common Dreams ’ Jessica Corbett. “Hear the voices of activists. Climate justice now."

Scientist Rebellion was founded in 2020 by Ph.D. students in Scotland, who were, in part, inspired by the Extinction Rebellion, per the AFP. The Extinction Rebellion is a “movement using non-violent direct action and civil disobedience to persuade governments to act justly on the Climate and Ecological Emergency,” per its website .

"I am not sure this is our last chance, but time is definitely running out," Jordan Cruz, an environmental engineer in Ecuador, writes to the AFP ’s Marlowe Hood in an email. "I am terrified," he writes. "But it's the kind of fear that motivates action. It is survival."

The Scientist Rebellion members have led several protests before, including at COP26 in Glasgow, at universities across the U.K. and in front of the Royal Society, per its website. Last year, the organization leaked a draft of the IPCC report.

"Scientists are particularly powerful messengers, and we have a responsibility to show leadership," Charlie Gardner, a conservation scientist at the University of Kent, tells AFP. "We are failing in that responsibility. If we say it's an emergency, we have to act like it is."

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Margaret Osborne | | READ MORE

Margaret Osborne is a freelance journalist based in the southwestern U.S. Her work has appeared in the Sag Harbor Express and has aired on WSHU Public Radio.

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Argumentative Essay on Global Warming

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What can we do to slow or stop global warming?

There is no one-size-fits-all approach to stopping or slowing global warming, and each individual, business, municipal, state, tribal, and federal entity must weigh their options in light of their own unique set of circumstances. Experts say it is likely many strategies working together will be needed. Generally speaking, here are some examples of mitigation strategies we can use to slow or stop the human-caused global warming ( learn more ):

Where possible, we can switch to renewable sources of energy (such as solar and wind energy) to power our homes and buildings, thus emitting far less heat-trapping gases into the atmosphere.
Where feasible, we can drive electric vehicles instead of those that burn fossil fuels; or we can use mass transit instead of driving our own cars.
Where affordable, we can conserve energy by better insulating our homes and buildings, and by replacing old, failing appliances with more energy-efficient models.
Where practicable, we can counterbalance our annual carbon dioxide emissions by investing in commercial services that draw down an equal amount of carbon out of the atmosphere, such as through planting trees or carbon capture and storage techniques.
Where practical, we can support more local businesses that use and promote sustainable, climate-smart practices such as those listed above.
We can consider placing an upper limit on the amount of carbon dioxide we will allow ourselves to emit into the atmosphere within a given timeframe.

Note that NOAA doesn’t advocate for or against particular climate policies. Instead, NOAA’s role is to provide data and scientific information about climate, including how it has changed and is likely to change in the future depending on different climate policies or actions society may or may not take. More guidance on courses of action can be found in the National Academy of Sciences' 2010 report, titled Informing an Effective Response to Climate Change . Also learn more here, here, and here .

Thanks to low friction between train wheels and tracks, and level train tracks with gradual turns, trains have high energy efficiency. Photo from National Park Service Amtrak Trails and Rails .

Stabilizing global temperature near its current level requires eliminating all emissions of heat-trapping gases or, equivalently, achieving a carbon-neutral society in which people remove as much carbon from the atmosphere as they emit. Achieving this goal will require substantial societal changes in energy technologies and infrastructure that go beyond the collective actions of individuals and households to reduce emissions.

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