Perhaps you have heard that we have only 12 years to get climate change under control, or else. Or else what? That is not exactly clear, but it will be expensive, deadly, and bad, though not, in any meaningful sense of the word, apocalyptic. The latest big summary from the U.N. body of scientists and researchers tasked with looking into the issue, the Fifth Assessment Report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, is foreboding. In its Summary for Policymakers about what a world that has passed the (arbitrary) mark of 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming looks like, it says things such as: “Trends in intensity and frequency of some climate and weather extremes have been detected over time spans during which about 0.5°C of global warming occurred (medium confidence). This assessment is based on several lines of evidence, including attribution studies for changes in extremes since 1950.”

Its careful scientific wording makes me believe climate change is real and that it’s anthropogenic, or human-caused.