Human-caused global warming – facts against disinformation

Posted on August 24, 2026 by svenaake

by

Sven Åke Bjørke


Fire infernos, warmer and rising seas, intense heatwaves followed by global refugee crises, extreme weather, dry rivers and reservoirs, glacier lake outburst floodings, galloping insurance premiums, damaged agriculture, air pollution, threatening ecological tipping points and societal disruption. A super-El Niño can take us further into the unknown. These are likely consequences of our inability to curb greenhouse gas emissions. Climate change is underway, and it will get worse. Yet politicians seem paralyzed. Most of us are. Is part of the explanation that powerful economic interests benefit from paralysis? Are we being manipulated into doubting – or simply giving up? Here are some facts about fossil energy and human-caused global warming.

100 million barrels of oil every day

The world consumes around 100 million barrels of oil every single day. One barrel contains 159 liters, almost a full bathtub. In total, this corresponds to about 16 billion liters of oil – every day. When a liter of diesel burns – or oxidizes, as the chemical process is called – it does not disappear. The carbon in the diesel binds with oxygen from the air and is transformed into CO2. Burning one liter of diesel produces, among other things, about 2.66 kg of CO2. There are also emissions associated with extracting, processing and transporting crude oil. Burning 159 liters of petroleum products ultimately adds 420 kilograms of CO2 to our common atmosphere.

We burn enormous quantities of coal and gas as well. Taken together, global consumption of coal, oil and gas represents a continuous flow of fossil carbon into the atmosphere – day and night, year-round of about 30 billion litres of oil equivalent, or 300.000 litres per second 24/7.

It would be extraordinarily naïve to believe that this has no consequences.

Oil, coal and gas are fossil fuels in which nature has stored carbon for millions of years. Over the course of just two centuries, we have extracted a large part of this carbon from the ground and released it back into the atmosphere and oceans. Fossil carbon is not part of the rapid, daily or annual carbon cycle in which living organisms respire and plants absorb CO2 through photosynthesis. Burning fossil fuels adds extra carbon to the natural carbon cycle.

USD 50-120 per barrel – gold for billionaires

The market price of a barrel of oil can fluctuate dramatically and has at times approached USD 120. Crude oil is traded globally in barrels, normally priced in US dollars.

If we take daily consumption of roughly 100 million barrels and multiply it by a conservative USD 60, we get some idea of the scale of the global crude-oil market: about USD 6 billion a day. And that is only crude oil. On top of this comes activity throughout the value chain: tanker transport, refineries and the retail sale of petroleum products such as gasoline, diesel, kerosene, asphalt and plastics. Coal and gas add further enormous markets. The international fossil-fuel industry is therefore exceptionally resourceful and politically influential. Around the world, fossil fuels also benefit from substantial subsidies and other forms of public support.

Behind many of the world’s largest oil and gas companies are either petroleum-exporting states or some of the world’s most capital-rich investor communities. Saudi Aramco is the world’s largest oil company and one of the world’s most valuable companies. Collectively, the largest international oil and gas companies command resources and capital that give them economic and political influence few other industries can match. The United States, Saudi Arabia and Russia are the world’s dominant oil producers, and fossil-energy interests remain deeply intertwined with geopolitics. Without oil revenues, Russian and Arabic economies will collapse, and the US economy would face severe problems.

$3,000 a second in profit

Six of the world’s largest fossil-fuel companies are expected to make close to $3,000 in profit every second in 2026, according to an analysis by Oxfam International – at a time when many households are struggling with high energy prices and the cost of living.

According to the Oxfam analysis, Chevron, Shell, BP, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil and TotalEnergies are projected to make about $2,967 a second in profit in 2026. The estimate illustrates the extraordinary financial scale of the fossil-fuel industry.

Billions of petrodollars for disinformation, denial and propaganda

The financial interests in prolonging the fossil-fuel era are enormous. Over many decades, parts of the fossil-fuel industry and organizations aligned with it have funded campaigns that cast doubt on climate science and oppose climate policy. Right-wing American think tanks such as the Heartland Institute and the Heritage Foundation have been prominent in this debate. Russian influence operations have also helped spread climate disinformation and amplify polarizing narratives about climate and energy policy. The result is an information environment in which well-established science is repeatedly presented as if it were still fundamentally uncertain.

More than 35 billion tonnes of CO2 per year

Burning fossil fuels releases more than 35 billion tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere every year. This carbon dioxide does not simply disappear. Some is absorbed by vegetation and the oceans; a substantial share remains in the atmosphere, and its effects persist for centuries.

A dramatic increase in just 200 years

For most of the Holocene – the geological period covering roughly the last 12,000 years – atmospheric CO2 remained within a relatively narrow range. Ice cores show that, for hundreds of thousands of years before the industrial era, atmospheric CO2 did not exceed about 300 ppm. The well-known Vostok ice-core record from Antarctica reaches back more than 400,000 years. It was during the unusually stable climate of the Holocene that agriculture developed and permanent human settlements expanded. The transition from nomadic life in the Paleolithic to more settled societies in the Neolithic was one of the great transformations in human history. Today’s rapid climate change therefore has profound implications for agriculture and food production. Human civilization has developed within a remarkably stable climatic corridor.

Original Vostok curve from the mid-1990s.
Usually, changes in incoming solar radiation are the initiating forcing factor e of climate change. CO2 is usually a “feedback” mechanism that amplifies the original radiative forcing and follows temperature fluctuations. Such Milankovich cycles run over thousands of years and are completely natural. The blue curve shows the relative stable climate of the last 12000 years. Significant global warming over a 100-year period is not natural.

No natural variation

In the heated climate debate, the warm period several thousand years ago – often called the Holocene Thermal Maximum – is sometimes cited as evidence that today’s warming is merely natural variation. But the comparison is misleading. That earlier pattern was driven primarily by slow changes in Earth’s orbit and the distribution of incoming solar energy. It was not a globally uniform warming comparable to what we observe today. The causes, geographical patterns and speed of change were fundamentally different.

What is happening now cannot be explained by natural climate variation alone. Changes in solar radiation, Earth’s orbit, volcanic activity and other natural factors are well known to climate science, but they do not explain the rapid, strong warming observed since industrialization. The evidence shows that human activity – above all the burning of fossil fuels – is the dominant cause of the current global warming. We can already observe the consequences as the Earth’s climate, and with it ecosystems around the world, change rapidly.

Atmospheric CO2 has risen rapidly since the Industrial Revolution, from about 280 ppm to well above 400 ppm today. Global temperatures have risen sharply as greenhouse-gas concentrations have increased. We are conducting an unprecedented experiment with the only planet we have. And we are the guinea pigs.

An overwhelming scientific consensus

Among actively publishing climate scientists, the consensus that humans are causing current global warming is overwhelming. The precise percentage depends on how studies define expertise and consensus, but the conclusion does not: there is no serious scientific dispute about whether human activities are warming the climate. The important scientific questions concern how fast particular changes will unfold, how severe their impacts will be and how societies should respond.

The 2015 Paris Agreement seeks to hold the increase in global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit it to 1.5°C. Every additional fraction of a degree increases risks. Treating these thresholds casually is a form of Russian roulette – except that the consequences will be borne not only by us, but by our children and grandchildren.

It is no consolation that the Earth has been warmer in the distant geological past. Millions of years ago, temperatures and sea levels were very different, as were ecosystems and the distribution of life. Nor do individual hot years or cold years tell us much about the long-term trend. What matters is the global pattern over decades. The warmest years in the instrumental record are overwhelmingly concentrated in the recent past, and extreme heat that was once exceptional is becoming much more common. Attribution science can now quantify how human-caused climate change makes many heatwaves and other extremes more likely and more intense.

The  summer of 2024 was the hottest ever recorded  until  2025 smashed that record, and now 2026 is set to possibly top that too. This is why scientists have found that this recent heatwave was  impossible without man-made climate change

The Earth is warming. Extremes are becoming more common.

A warmer atmosphere can hold more water vapor

Warmer oceans and air increase the amount of water vapor the atmosphere can hold. Water vapor is itself a powerful greenhouse gas and acts as an important feedback mechanism: initial warming caused by CO2 and other greenhouse gases allows more water vapor to accumulate, amplifying the warming. A warmer atmosphere can also contribute to heavier precipitation and flooding. Climate change can alter large-scale atmospheric circulation and increase the risk of persistent weather patterns and atmospheric rivers in some regions. Natural greenhouse gases make the Earth habitable; additional human-made greenhouse gases disturb that balance and give the planet a “fever”. Even a seemingly small increase in global average temperature can trigger large natural feedbacks and push ecosystems toward critical tipping points. Ecologists and climate scientists have warned about these risks for decades. Yet effective action remains painfully slow. The dance around the golden calf of oil is still too tempting.

From fossil fuels to decentralized renewable energy

Fossil energy is ultimately a sunset industry. Renewable electricity is expanding rapidly, technologies are improving and the economics of energy are changing. The transition will not happen overnight, and fossil fuels still supply a large share of global energy. But the direction of travel is increasingly clear.

Fossil fuels – a sunset industry

Over the next 10–15 years, we should accelerate the transition toward non-fossil energy and, where practical, produce more energy locally. Decentralized systems can strengthen resilience and reduce exposure to volatile international fuel markets. Electrification is also inherently more efficient in many applications: combustion engines and fossil-fuel systems lose large amounts of energy as waste heat, while electric technologies can deliver the same useful service with far less primary energy and much lower emissions when powered by clean electricity.

More decentralized energy production and local ownership can improve preparedness, resilience and the distribution of economic benefits. Part of the income from exporting electricity could, for example, be returned to citizens as an “Electricity Bonus”, rewarding energy saving and investment in renewable energy. The transition to a fossil-free society is demanding and requires major investment. But failing to make the transition will also carry enormous costs: higher insurance losses, floods and droughts, more unpredictable weather, loss of nature, pollution, migration pressures, higher food costs, ocean acidification, landslides, conflict risks and damage to infrastructure.

Renewable energy can provide greater predictability, preparedness and resilience. A less fossil-dependent society can also be less vulnerable to geopolitical shocks.

Renewable energy sources such as solar, wind, hydro, tidal and geothermal power can dramatically reduce greenhouse-gas emissions and air pollution. Their underlying energy resources are widely distributed across the globe, making greater energy self-sufficiency possible in many countries. Local renewable energy is less dependent on decisions made in Washington, Moscow or Riyadh, or on shipping through the Strait of Hormuz. The technologies for renewable power, electrification and batteries already exist, although they must continue to improve and scale much faster. The transition is well underway. We can choose to invest, innovate and participate in it – or allow other countries, not least China, to dominate the technologies and industries of the emerging energy system. That is a political choice – for the time being.

Sources and further reading

Oil

Greenhouse gases

Impacts

Extreme weather

Disinformation from the fossil fuel industry

Transformation now

Decentralised energy production

Renewable energy

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About svenaake

University Teacher.
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