Climate Change Is Not Caused by Human Activity
Candace Owens consistently questions or denies the causal role of human activity in climate change. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concludes with greater than 95% confidence that human activity is the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-twentieth century.
What we know
Candace Owens is an American conservative commentator and author who has built an international following through provocative political commentary. Alongside conservative positions that can be debated in good faith, Owens has in a number of appearances questioned or denied the role of human activity in climate change, claiming it is a political construct or that the evidence is not as clear-cut as the mainstream media presents.
The climate evidence is, however, one of the most robust bodies of science in any field. The IPCC Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) of 2021 concludes with greater than 95% confidence that human activity is the dominant cause of the observed temperature rise since the mid-twentieth century. That conclusion is supported by the convergence of independent lines of evidence: the rise in atmospheric CO₂ whose chemical 'fingerprint' corresponds to fossil fuels rather than volcanoes or the oceans; tropospheric warming alongside stratospheric cooling (predicted by the greenhouse model, not by solar activity); and the spatial and temporal patterns of warming that correspond to models incorporating anthropogenic forcing.
Factiverse documented a concrete case in 2025 in which Joe Rogan falsely claimed that the Earth was cooling - a claim closely aligned with Owens's positions - and 14 million listeners received it before the author of the misquoted research could publicly issue a correction. That example shows how climate change denial in large media spaces has concrete consequences for public understanding of one of the most urgent challenges facing civilisation.
All national academies of science in the world - including those of Russia and China - concur with the IPCC consensus. Cook et al. (2013) and subsequent reanalyses showed that the proportion of climate scientists who accept anthropogenic warming lies between 97% and 99%.
Common claims
- Climate change is not caused by human activity.False - the IPCC states >95% confidence in the opposite conclusion
- The scientific consensus on climate change is disputed.False - 97–99% of climate scientists agree on the anthropogenic cause
- The Earth may be cooling rather than warming.False - every decade since the 1980s has been warmer than the one before