Humans Are Responsible for Nearly All Modern Global Warming

No special reason for this post, but in case anyone ever suggests to you that, sure, global warming is real, but we don’t know how much is caused by humans—well, yes we do:

This is from the Fourth National Climate Assessment, which states with high confidence that “the likely contributions of natural forcing and internal variability to global temperature change over that period [1951-2010] are minor.” If you want to see all the human causes broken down further, here you go:

We humans have done things that both increase and decrease the amount of solar heat being trapped on the earth. However, they don’t balance out: the increases are far greater than the decreases. The result is global warming.

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AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

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