A report by the United Nations on Monday gave a grim prediction that in about ten years, that global temperatures will be passed a level of warming that world leaders have sought to prevent.
The question now is: how far will we go in trying to lessen the impact?
Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, told KNX In Depth they've been tracking trends in sea level, precipitation and temperature and attributing it to the activity of humans, such as greenhouse gases, pollution and deforestation.
"What we can say now definitively is that our fingerprints are all over this," He said.
"We take all the things that could be changing the climate -, volcanoes, the sun, the roles in the earth’s orbit, air pollution, ozone's, depletion - and look for fingerprints of change that could be associated with it. Then we match up those fingerprints with what we’re seeing in the climate system."
So what can humans do to combat this? Schmidt said it starts with talking about it.
"We want people to do is really just talk about it with your neighbors, talk with your parent-teacher association, with your faith group, in your town halls, in the letters to the editor, in your social environments, and to your politicians, and decision-makers," he said.
You can listen to Schmidt's interview on In Depth by clicking the link above the article.