evidence: In the late 19th century, the scientist (and suffragette) Eunice Newton Foote published a paper suggesting that a build-up of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere could cause increased surface temperatures1. In the mid-20th century, the British engineer Guy Callendar was the first to concretize the link between carbon dioxide levels and global warming2. Now, a century and a half after Foote’s work, there is overwhelming scientific evidence that human behaviour is the main driver of climatic changes and global warming. [...] Human behaviour is a neglected factor in climate science In the light of the empirical evidence for the role of human behaviour in climatic changes, it is curious that the ‘human factor’ has not always received much attention in key research areas, such as climate modelling. For a long time, climate models to predict global warming and emissions did not account for it. This oversight meant that predictions made by these models have differed greatly in their projected rise in temperatures8,9.