Wildfires are burning across large parts of North America and Europe, deadly heat waves are lingering over dozens of major cities, and the world’s oceans are hotter than at any time since reliable records began about 175 years ago. Some scientists say 2026 has a real chance of becoming the hottest year on record if a very strong natural warming of the Pacific Ocean develops later this year.

Even without a strong El Niño, 2026 is on track to finish among the warmest years since modern record keeping began in 1850. For now, the hottest year remains 2024, followed by 2023 and then 2025.

The fact that the last three years have been the hottest on record has renewed debate over anthropogenic global warming—the idea that the release of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere is causing the planet to warm. Climate scientist Zeke Hausfather has noted that public attention to climate change has weakened amid wars and other crises, even as global warming has accelerated.

Yet what does the evidence actually say about anthropogenic global warming?

The hypothesis of anthropogenic global warming states that when humans burn fossil fuels, the resulting gases insulate the planet to an unnatural extent. This allegedly causes Earth to warm. Few deny that the planet seems to be 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than it was in the late 19th century, but the link between temperature and carbon dioxide levels is not as straightforward as many say.

According to nasa’s Earth Observatory and temperature records, Earth’s average surface temperature rose by nearly 1 degree Fahrenheit between about 1910 and 1940. Over roughly the same period, atmospheric carbon dioxide levels increased by only a few percent. Between the early 1940s and the late 1970s, carbon dioxide continued to rise, but global temperatures stayed flat or cooled slightly.

Media outlets in the 1970s raised concerns about global cooling. Yet from 1978 to 1998, temperatures rose again by another degree Fahrenheit while carbon dioxide increased further. After the strong El Niño year of 1998, the rate of surface warming slowed for about 15 years. Yet this “pause” seems to have ended. Global temperatures have risen about half a degree Fahrenheit since the mid-2010s.

These patterns raise questions about how straightforward the link is between fossil fuel emissions and the observed warming. A recent study by Grant Foster and Stefan Rahmstorf, published in Geophysical Research Letters and titled “Global Warming Has Accelerated Significantly,” notes that earlier analyses had not reached 95 percent statistical confidence in warming acceleration when natural variability was left in the data. After the authors removed the estimated natural effects of El Niño, volcanoes and solar changes, however, they found warming acceleration with more than 98 percent confidence.

In other words, the study supports the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s assessment that natural factors have played only a minor role in the long-term warming trend compared with human-caused greenhouse gas emissions. In order to believe this assessment, however, one has to set aside substantial data from ice cores, speleothems (dripstones), tree rings and ocean sediment cores.

A large body of evidence indicates that Earth naturally alternates between warm and cold phases on roughly millennial timescales. This cycle includes the Holocene warm period, the Akkadian cold period, the Minoan warm period, the Bronze Age cold period, the Roman warm period, the Dark Ages cold period, the Medieval warm period, the Little Ice Age and the modern warm period. During the Medieval warm period, the Vikings colonized Greenland and vineyards were cultivated in parts of England. This period occurred centuries before the first industrial smokestacks and automobiles.

“Based on climate reconstructions from North Atlantic deep-sea sediment cores, Prof. Gerard Bond discovered that the millennial-scale climate cycles ran largely parallel to solar cycles, including the Eddy Cycle which is—guess what—1,000 years long,” wrote German environmentalist Fritz Vahrenholt in 2012. “So it is really the sun that shaped the temperature roller coaster of the past 10,000 years. … With our empirically proven natural pre-industrial pattern, however, we would predict that solar activity had risen since 1850, more or less in parallel with an increase in temperatures. Indeed, both timing and amount of warming of nearly 1 degree Celsius fit nicely into this natural scheme.”

Dr. Vahrenholt does not deny that greenhouse gases contribute to climate change. He simply concludes that the contributions of carbon dioxide emissions are less significant when compared with the effects of the sun. Solar activity increased from roughly 1900 to 1940 and decreased from about 1940 to 1970, correlating more closely with global temperatures than carbon dioxide levels during those intervals in some analyses. Yet many scientists still find it politically expedient to downplay this type of research.

Burning fossil fuels may have some effect on global temperatures, but controversies over data handling have clouded the issue. What appears in the news cycle is often not an open contest of evidence. Instead, it is a campaign designed to frighten people into accepting greater government control.

Many dismiss the idea that God controls the weather. Yet the Bible states that God balances the vapors of the clouds and warms the Earth with a south wind (Job 37:16-17). God commands the clouds to do His will, whether for mercy or for correction (verses 12-13). Psalm 148 declares, “Fire, and hail; snow, and vapour; stormy wind fulfilling his word” (verse 8). These passages affirm that God governs the sun, the atmosphere and the storms—and that He uses them to accomplish His purposes.

One of these purposes is correction for sin. God says in Isaiah 29:6, “You will be punished by the Lord of hosts with thunder and earthquake and great noise, with storm and tempest and the flame of devouring fire” (New King James Version). Yet many ignore God’s warning because they believe climate change is solvable only through technological control. Environmental stewardship is important, but the main sin for which God is punishing mankind is not burning too much gasoline.

To learn more, read “The Deadly Climate Change Deception” by Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry.