Between 2010 and 2019, the world witnessed the hottest decade on record. In 2019, while very few places saw general cooling trends, including North America (Fountain & Popovich, 2020), the majority of the world experienced significantly higher temperatures (Figure 1). Some of the places that felt the greatest warming include Russia, Europe, southwest Africa, southeast Asia, and Australia. And rising global temperatures are merely one consequence of human behavior; in terms of atmospheric CO2 levels, the Earth has seen levels fluctuate over the last 400,000 years, up until the last century, during which time they have virtually skyrocketed (Figure 2). And there is a clear correlation that can be drawn between recorded human production of CO2 and these trends in rising temperatures that we have experienced in the last century. Figure 3 depicts carbon dioxide production by fuel source and region. Since records began in 1850, human production of CO2 has continued to increase, along with average global temperatures (National Climate Assessment, 2014).

Figure 1: Baseline is derived from average temperatures between 1951 - 1980 (Fountain & Popovich, 2020).

https://www.economist.com/briefing/2019/09/21/the-past-present-and-future-of-climate-change