What role has human activity played in causing climate change?

Nowadays, the extent of the human contribution to modern global warming is a hotly debated topic. The current global average temperature is 0. 85ºC higher than it was in the late 19th century. Earth’s surface has undergone unprecedented warming over the last centuries, and the most discussed question is whether human activity is the major cause of this phenomenon. As many studies show, the principal cause of climate change is human activity and, in particular, the ways in which societies produce and use energy. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s fifth assessment report, human emissions and activities have caused around 100% of the warming observed since 1950. Human endeavours, like burning fossil fuels, cutting down rainforests, and farming livestock, result in tremendous change in global climate patterns and increase greenhouse gas concentration in the atmosphere. Human causes could not have contributed to the shift in worldwide weather single-handedly. On the contrary, among vast range of climate forcers, non-human climate drivers also exist. For natural grounds for climate change, among which are changes in volcanic activity and solar output, IPCC assigns a 3-5% role, noting, however, that these factors could also have been affected by human activity indirectly. What is more, large volcanic eruptions may result in the cooling effect rather than in the rise of the average global temperature. Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, people have burned more and more fossil fuels and changed vast areas of land from forests to farmland. The solutions for recent global climate change are within the human domain inasmuch as the primary cause of these environmental changes.