Why Climate Change Is Real

It sometimes happens to me that I stumble over a video or an article on the Internet, which presents climate change as a lie. That's why, I occasionally catch myself doubting climate change or at least the massive scale of it a bit.
So I decided to do some research to determine if these doubts are appropriate. In this article I will show what I found out. I also want to encourage you to do more research by yourself, because I think it's always the best to form your own opinion.

How big is the consensus among scientists that climate change is caused by humans?

I found an article of Australian scientist John Cook, stating that “the consensus that humans are causing recent global warming is shared by 90%–100% of publishing climate scientists"^[1] according to several studies. So it's safe to say almost no scientist believes that we don’t have an effect on climate change.

What indicators make scientists so sure?

The most obvious indicator is that the average temperature is 1.2 °C higher than in pre-industrial times, according to the World Meteorological Organization.^[2] This can be directly correlated with our emissions strengthening the greenhouse effect. This rise in temperature doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s getting warmer everywhere and at the same speed, which is often falsely assumed. In fact the warming isn’t equally distributed around the globe. For example, temperatures in the Arctic have increased at least twice as fast as the global average.^[3]

Is there a proof that it’s our fault?

Although these are strong indicators, there's one thing many of you probably never heard of, or at least I did. What's basically the most reliable evidence for man made climate change, is something called "Suess-effect". To understand it, you first have to know that there are different types of carbon atoms. One type is the C-14 atom that is formed due to cosmic radiation and can be found in every organism like plants and animals. When these organisms die, they get covered with soil and are compressed to fossil fuels like coal, gas and oil over a long period of time. These materials are many million years old and therefore don't contain any C-14 anymore. And even if they are burned, like we do it in order to generate power, the emissions don't contain C-14. Scientists found out that the concentration of naturally formed "C-14 carbon" in the atmosphere has decreased. In reverse, this means that the rise in carbon in the atmosphere is made up entirely of C-14 free carbon, which can only hail from burning fossil fuels. These observations can be considered as one of the most meaningful evidences, that global climate change is caused by humans.^[4][5]

Conclusion

To sum it up, I already was quite sure about a consensus about climate change before researching this. But what I didn't know was how clear the evidence is, that it is caused by us.
Did you already know about all these things? What are your thoughts? I'm happy about feedback, especially because this is my first article.

Title Photo by NASA on Unsplash