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Monday, Oct. 27, 2025

Is there empirical evidence for human-caused global warming?

Sue Bin Park, Skeptical Science
yes

There are multiple lines of evidence that our greenhouse gas emissions are warming the planet. 

The greenhouse effect is the process whereby “greenhouse” gases such as carbon dioxide create a kind of atmospheric blanket, absorbing outgoing heat energy and re-radiating a portion of it back down to Earth. 

CO2 levels surged after humans began burning fossil fuels such as coal and oil. Today, we’re over 420 parts per million — up 50% from pre-industrial times and higher than for millions of years.

We know this increase is from burning fossil fuels, which produce a form of CO2 with extremely low levels of the carbon-14 isotope. The drop of carbon-14 in the atmosphere following the Industrial Revolution is a fossil fuel “fingerprint” of the CO2 spike.

Satellite measurements confirm a decrease in heat energy radiated out into space and an increase in heat energy re-radiated back down to Earth’s surface.

See a full discussion of this at Skeptical Science

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Skeptical Science is a non-profit science education organization. Our goal is to remove a roadblock to climate action by building public resilience against climate misinformation. We achieve this by publishing debunking of climate myths as well as providing resources for educators, communicators, scientists, and the general public. Skeptical Science was founded and is led by John Cook, a Senior Research Fellow with the Melbourne Centre for Behaviour Change at the University of Melbourne.

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