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- CBS News
- 7 min
- It's the sun. While it is true that varying intensity of energy from the sun has driven long-term climate changes like ice ages in the distant past, the sun can not explain the recent spike in warming.
- Carbon dioxide levels are tiny. They can't make a difference. It's true, carbon dioxide (CO2) makes up a tiny fraction of the atmosphere, less than a tenth of a percent.
- Scientists disagree on the cause of climate change. Contrary to popular belief, scientists do not disagree that climate change is happening and that it is caused by humans.
- The climate has always changed. It's natural. No scientist will disagree that the climate changes naturally. It always has and it always will. What makes the recent changes stand out is the unprecedented pace of change.
- The Earth’s climate has always changed. Over the course of the Earth’s 4.5-billion-year history, the climate has changed a lot. This is true. But the rapid warming we’re seeing now can't be explained by natural cycles of warming and cooling.
- Plants need carbon dioxide. Plants do need carbon dioxide (CO2) to live. Plants and forests remove and store away huge amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere each year.
- Global warming isn't real as it's still cold. Global warming is causing the Earth’s average surface temperature to increase. This is not only making heatwaves and droughts more likely but it’s also causing changes to our natural climate systems.
- Climate change is a future problem. This is no longer an excuse not to act on climate change and push the burden onto future generations. Last year, the world’s leading climate scientists warned we only have 12 years to limit global warming to a maximum of 1.5C and avoid climate breakdown.
Aug 9, 2021 · Climate scientists debunk myths about global warming, the temperature record, carbon dioxide, extreme weather, and climate change.
Apr 4, 2012 · Myth: Even before SUVs and other greenhouse-gas spewing technologies, Earth's climate was changing, so humans can't be responsible for today's global warming. Science: Climate changes in the past...
- Overview
- Myth No. 4: There have been big climate changes in the past, such as the Little Ice Age and the Medieval Warm Period, so why can’t recent climate changes just be explained by natural variability?
- Myth No. 5: Natural forces such as solar variability, cosmic rays or volcanic eruptions can explain the observed warming.
- Myth 6. The urban heat island effect or other land use changes can explain the observed warming.
- Myth 7. Natural ocean variability can explain the observed warming.
- Myth No. 8: In the past, global temperatures rose first and then carbon dioxide levels rose later. Therefore, rising temperatures cause higher CO2 levels, not the other way around.
There’s no consensus on global warming. Climate models are inaccurate. Temperature records are unreliable. Earth’s climate has changed before. Oceans are cooling. Human CO2 emissions represent a tiny percentage of overall CO2. Water vapor is the most powerful greenhouse gas.
And so on, and so on. We’ve heard them all.
Climate change is one of the most contentious issues facing society today. The question of how (or whether) we respond to climate change ultimately is a matter for policymakers to decide, but politics cannot (and should not) be separated from good science.
With that in mind, Marc Airhart with the University of Texas at Austin has developed a series of reports that track research conducted by climate scientists’ at the Jackson School of Geosciences on eight of the most common myths about climate change. All told, the reports provide an informed perspective on this important public policy debate.
Myth No. 1: What global warming? Earth has actually been cooling since 1998.
Some people skeptical of global warming claim that Earth’s global surface temperatures have been falling or have leveled off since 1998. They point to data now several years out of date from U.K. researchers that put 1998 as the warmest year on record. They also point to an unusually cool summer in North America in 2009 followed by an abnormally cold winter across the northern hemisphere. People who had to shovel record snows from their driveways or live without power during ferocious snowstorms in the northeastern United States began to doubt decades of scientific evidence on global warming.
People who dispute evidence of recent global warming sometimes point to two episodes in the past 1,000 years called the Little Ice Age and the Medieval Warm Period — times when northern hemisphere temperatures were higher or lower than average for decades or even centuries — as examples of internal variability, a kind of natural randomness in the climate system that can’t be explained by any specific forcing. If true, perhaps internal variability could explain the current rapid global warming, skeptics argue. In other words, maybe our current warming is just an unlucky roll of the dice, a blip rather than a long term trend.
Continue reading this myth …
Nearly all of the heat at the surface of Earth comes from radiation from the sun. Perhaps, as one hypothesis goes, that radiation has become more intense in recent decades and is making the planet warmer. A second, more complicated hypothesis involving the sun proposes that higher solar activity tends to suppress the levels of cosmic rays, high energy particles from space, hitting our atmosphere. Cosmic rays help form water droplets and clouds. Clouds are thought to have an overall cooling effect on the planet. Still with us? So in this view, if the sun is more active, then there are fewer cosmic rays, less cloud cover, and a warmer Earth.
Continue reading this myth …
The urban heat island effect is a well documented phenomenon caused by roads and buildings absorbing more heat than undeveloped land and vegetation. It causes cities to be warmer than surrounding countryside and can even influence rainfall patterns. Perhaps, the argument goes, ground based weather stations have been systematically measuring a rise in temperature not from a global effect but from local land use changes.
Continue reading this myth …
The oceans are the largest single reservoir of heat in the climate system. And they do have internal cycles of variability, such as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) and the Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillation (AMO). These cycles have impacts on the sea surface temperature in specific regions that vary from year to year and even from decade to decade. So perhaps, the argument goes, we just happen to be in a warm period that will last a few decades and the oceans will eventually switch back to a cool period.
Continue reading this myth …
Ice cores from Dome C in Antarctica record surface temperatures and atmospheric concentrations of CO2 going back over 800,000 years. During that time, several ice ages came and went. After each ice age ended, temperatures rose first and then several centuries later, CO2 concentrations rose. This lag, some skeptics conclude, proves that CO2 increases are caused by global warming, not the other way around.
Continue reading this myth …
Besides these thousands of thermometer readings from weather stations around the world, there are many other clear indicators of global warming such as rising ocean temperatures, sea level, and atmospheric humidity, and declining snow cover, glacier mass, and sea ice.
There are many levels to climate change denial. These are nine widespread myths and misconceptions about climate change, broken down into three stages of disbelief. Challenge: Take One Action Per Day to Protect Our Environment. Stage One: Climate Change is a hoax. Earth isn’t warming.
