TLDR
Yes. The Earth is warming. This is measured by thermometers, satellites, ocean sensors, and ice cores — not opinions. The average temperature has risen about 1.1°C (2°F) since the 1800s, and it's speeding up. The cause is greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels. This is not controversial among scientists.
How Do We Know the Earth Is Getting Warmer?
We measure it. Not with one thermometer — with thousands of them, all over the world, every single day, for over 150 years. Weather stations on land, buoys in the ocean, weather balloons in the sky, and satellites orbiting the Earth all measure temperature independently. They all show the same thing: the planet is getting warmer.
The numbers
The Earth's average temperature has risen about 1.1°C (roughly 2°F) since the late 1800s. That might sound small, but it's an average across the entire planet — land, oceans, poles, tropics, everything. The last nine years have been the nine warmest ever recorded. 2024 was the hottest year in human history.
We also have ways to check temperatures from before thermometers existed. Scientists drill deep into ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland and pull out long tubes of ice called "ice cores." Each layer of ice is like a chapter in a history book — it holds tiny air bubbles from the atmosphere at the time it froze. By analyzing those bubbles, scientists can tell what the temperature and CO₂ levels were hundreds of thousands of years ago.
Those ice cores show something important: the amount of CO₂ in the atmosphere right now is higher than it's been in at least 800,000 years. And temperature has always followed CO₂.
What's Causing It?
The blanket analogy.
The Earth is wrapped in a thin layer of air called the atmosphere. Some of the gases in that layer — like carbon dioxide (CO₂) and methane — act like a blanket. They let sunlight in, but they trap heat from escaping back into space.
This is actually a good thing in normal amounts. Without these gases, the Earth would be a frozen ball of ice — about -18°C (0°F) on average.
The problem is we've been making the blanket thicker. Every time we burn coal, oil, or natural gas, we add more CO₂ to the atmosphere. More CO₂ means a thicker blanket. A thicker blanket means more heat stays trapped. The planet warms up.
Before the Industrial Revolution (around the 1800s), CO₂ levels in the atmosphere were about 280 parts per million. Today they're over 420 parts per million — a 50% increase. That extra CO₂ came from humans burning fossil fuels and cutting down forests.
"But the Climate Has Always Changed"
This is true — and it's also the most misused fact in the entire debate. Yes, the Earth's climate has changed naturally over millions of years. Ice ages have come and gone. But here's what's different this time:
Speed. Natural climate changes typically happen over thousands of years. What we're seeing now is happening in decades. The warming since 1900 has happened roughly 10 times faster than any natural warming period in the ice core record.
Cause. Natural climate changes are driven by things like shifts in Earth's orbit, volcanic eruptions, and changes in solar output. Scientists have checked all of these — none of them explain the current warming. The only thing that matches the pattern is the increase in greenhouse gases from human activity.
The scientific consensus
Multiple independent studies have found that 97% or more of climate scientists agree: the Earth is warming and human activity is the primary cause. Every major scientific organization in the world — NASA, NOAA, the National Academy of Sciences, the World Meteorological Organization — says the same thing. This is not a 50/50 debate in the scientific community.
"But It Snowed Last Week"
Weather and climate are different things. Weather is what's happening outside right now — a cold snap, a heat wave, a rainstorm. Climate is the long-term pattern over decades. A cold week doesn't disprove global warming any more than a hot day proves it. What matters is the trend — and the trend, measured over decades across the entire planet, is unmistakably upward.
What's Already Happening?
The effects of warming aren't predictions — many are already measurable. Sea levels have risen about 8-9 inches since 1900 because warmer water expands and ice sheets are melting. Arctic sea ice is declining. Glaciers worldwide are shrinking. Heat waves are more frequent and more intense. Wildfire seasons are longer. Rainfall patterns are shifting — wet areas are getting wetter, dry areas are getting drier.
None of this is political. It's measured. You can look at the data yourself at climate.nasa.gov.
The bottom line
Global warming is not a matter of opinion. It's a measurement. The Earth is warmer than it was. It's warming faster than it naturally should. The cause is greenhouse gases from human activity. These are statements backed by millions of data points from independent sources across 150+ years. What we do about it is a fair debate. Whether it's happening is not.
Sources: NASA Global Climate Change; NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information; IPCC Sixth Assessment Report (2021-2023); ice core data from EPICA and Vostok programs. Have a correction? Contact us.