Global warming controversy

The current scientific consensus on climate change is that recent warming indicates a fairly stable long-term trend, that the trend is largely human-caused, and that serious damage may result at some future date if steps are not taken to halt the trend.

Mainstream scientific organizations worldwide (Royal Society, American Geophysical Union, Joint Science Academies, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, American Meteorological Society, and American Association for the Advancement of Science) concur with the assessment that most of the observed warming over the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the human-caused increase in greenhouse gas concentrations.

However, there is also a small but vocal number of scientists in climate and climate-related fields that disagree with the consensus view.