Arguments
Climate Myth Fallacies (UNDER CONSTRUCTION)
| Fact | Myth | Fallacy |
| Our planet has continued to build up heat since 1998 - global warming is still happening. | Global warming stopped in 1998. | Cherry picking: looking at one region or a short period ignores the full picture. |
| Global warming is like rigging the weather dice, making it more likely to get hot days. | It's cold outside, so global warming must have stopped. | False Expectations: global warming doesn't mean no more cold weather, just less cold days compared to hot days |
| Overall, glaciers across the globe are shrinking at an accelerating rate, threatening water supplies for millions of people. | Glaciers around the world are increasing, disproving global warming. | Cherry picking: picking a handful of growing glaciers ignores the vast majority of glaciers that are shrinking. |
| Greenland on the whole is losing ice, at a rate of over 2 Mount Everests worth of ice every year | Greenland Ice sheet is thickening in the middle so it must be gaining mass. | Cherry picking: You need to look at the whole ice sheet. It's thickening in the middle but ice loss at the edges is accelerating. |
| The West Antarctic ice sheet is losing hundreds of billions of tonnes of ice every year, making it a major contributor to global sea level rise. | Antarctic sea ice is on the increase and casts doubt on global warming. | Over simplification: Antarctic sea ice is complicated and a number of factors may contribute to the increase in sea ice - but in no way does it change the fact that climate change is happening, even around Antarctica. |
| We can measure temperature in many ways and they all say the same thing - our planet is warming. | The thermometer record is unreliable and not accurate or have sufficient coverage to detect global warming. | Jumping to conclusions: just because measurements have "error" or uncertainty doesn't mean it's unknowable. The uncertainty is smaller than the measured global warming. |
| Urban heat has had minimal effect on the climate record, with much warming happening where there is little urban development. | Urban development is responsible for much of global warming over the last century. | Jumping to conclusions: just because urban heat might affect the climate record doesn't mean it does - you have to check it. Scientists have checked and confirmed it has neglible effect. |
| Slowing jet stream is causing Arctic cold air to leak down into Europe and North America, like an open fridge leaking cold air into the kitchen | Record cold winters disprove global warming | Jumping to conclusions, cherry picking: a cold winter doesn't disprove global warming, you need to look at the big picture |
| Climate change and global warming have both been used for decades. | They changed name from ‘global warming’ to ‘climate change’ | Misrepresentation: they didn't change the name. |
| For thousands of years, our atmosphere has been in balance. Humans have upset the balance. | Human CO2 emissions are tiny compared to natural CO2 emissions so our influence is negligible. | Over-simplification: considers only natural CO2 emissions and ignores natural CO2 sinks. |
| Human emissions are responsible for all of the increase in CO2 in the air in the past two centuries. | Volcanoes produce more CO2 than humans have. | Jumping to conclusions: volcanoes do produce CO2, but over recent centuries the amounts are too small to account for the observed changes in the air. |
| If we stopped emitting CO2, it would take thousands of years for the atmosphere to return to pre-industrial levels | CO2 has a residence time of only 4 years so CO2 levels would fall quickly if we stopped emitting. | Red herring: residence time is how quickly a CO2 molecule moves around the climate system but that's different to how long it takes CO2 level to return back to normal. |
| Greenhouse gases are like a blanket, they trap heat sending it back down to space where we measure it. | Greenhouse effect violates the 2nd law of thermodynamics. | Misrepresentation: 2nd law which talks about NET flow of energy and doesn't forbid some flow from cool to hot |
| Emitting more CO2 means more heat is being trapped high up in the atmosphere where the air is thinner. | The greenhouse effect is saturated so adding more CO2 won't affect it. | Over-simplification: considers atmosphere as a single layer when it's multiple layers. |
| Ice core record tells us warming causes the ocean to emit more CO2. Combined with greenhouse effect, this is a reinforcing feedback. | CO2 lagging temperature means greenhouse effect is minimal. | False dichotomy: it's not one or the other but both |
| One human fingerprint is a cooling upper atmosphere with a warming lower atmosphere. Satellites have measured this pattern. | One fingerprint of human-caused global warming is the tropospheric hot spot which hasn't been observed. | Red herring: hot spot is irrelevant to greenhouse warming. |
| Satellites measure the warming effect from CO2 - the increased greenhouse effect is an empirical reality. | CO2 is trace gas | Red herring: trace amounts of substances can have a strong effect and this is irrelevant to the warming potential of CO2 |
| Fingerprints of annual/diurnal cycle confirm AGW, rule out sun | Sun causes global warming | Cherry picking: ignores recent period where sun and climate move in opposite directions |
| Many lines of evidence and human fingerprints indicate that humans are currently driving climate change. | Climate has changed naturally in the past so current climate change must be natural also. | Jumping to conclusion: past climate change actually sends the opposite message than what the myth concludes |
| The natural influences that ended the Little Ice Age have been swamped by the rising trend of human influences in the 20th Century. | Current warming is just the continuation of natural recovery from the Little Ice Age. | Red Herring: the natural factors that ended the Little Ice Age are no longer significant. |
| Different factors affect climate. In the mid 20th century particulate pollution had a cooling influence. When that pollution was reduced, greenhouse warming dominated and global warming resumed. | It cooled mid 20th century while we were emiting greenhouse gases; therefore, greenhouse gases don't cause warming. | Oversimplification: different factors affect climate. It's simplistic to say that one thing is the cause. |
| CO2 is nature's thermostat - in the past when the sun was cooler, CO2 was higher with the two roughly balancing each other out. We are now raising CO2 levels but with a much warmer sun. | CO2 was higher in the past but the world didn't boil away so greenhouse effect is weak. | Cherry picking: ignoring the role of the sun which was cooler in the past. |
| While the Medieval Warm Period saw unusually warm temperatures in some regions, globally the planet was cooler than current conditions. | The Medieval Warm Period was warmer than current conditions. This means recent warming is not unusual and hence must be natural, not man-made. | Cherry Picking: individual locations might show warm temperatures at one time, but when you average out the temperature over a wide region, the hot regions often are cancelled out by other cool regions. |
| Trick has nothing to do with decline in tree-rings - the "decline tree-ring data" wasn't even used in the hockey stick | Scientists tried to hide decline in temperature | Conspiracy theory: assuming nefarious intent when scientists were just discussing methods and techniques. |
| Models are based on fundamental physical principles and have become increasingly sophisticated and detailed as scientific understanding and computer power has increased. | Models are not perfect so they're useless. | Impossible expectations: no model is perfect but they are useful tools that can reproduce past climate change and provide insights into future climate change. |
| Models have made a number of successful predictions: geographic pattern of global warming, the loss of Arctic sea ice, the rising of sea levels, and so on. | Models predictions have failed to predict short-term climate changes and therefore are useless. | Impossible Expectations: climate models have had great success at predicting long-term effects like greenhouse warming. |
| Climate models simulate climate which is weather averaged over time. | Scientists can’t even predict weather | Confusing weather with climate |
| In the 1970s, the majority of climate papers were predicting warming | In the 1970s, climate scientists were predicting an ice age | Misrepresentation: confuses mainstream media reports with scientific papers which overwhelmingly pointed towards warming. |
| Even if the sun fell to Maunder Minimum levels, the only effect it would have would be to delay human-caused global warming by a decade. | We're heading into another ice age because of the cooling sun. | Misrepresentation: overstating the role of solar activity on climate - it actually has had little effect. |
| IPCC 20 times more likely to underestimate rather than exagerate climate impacts. | IPCC/models are alarmist | Cherry picking: uses isolated examples where the IPCC overestimated climate impacts but ignores the big picture of the IPCC mostly underestimating climate impacts. Conspiracy theory: believing scientists are conspiring to trick people |
| Water vapor is one of the strongest climate feedbacks - the amount of water vapor in the air is a function of temperature so some initial warming causes water vapor to rise, a reinforcing feedback. | Water vapor is strongest greenhouse gas | Red herring; the fact that water vapor is a strong greenhouse gas means it actually amplifies the warming from greenhouse gases. Also an oversimplification, failing to distinguish between feedbacks (water vapor) and forcings (CO2) |
| Mass extinctions happen when climate changes too fast. This has already happened 5 times in Earth's past. Currently species are going extinct at similar rates to past mass extinctions. | Species can adapt to climate change | Jumping to conclusions: just because species can adapt to some climate change doesn't mean they can adjust to the dramatic climate change happening now. As past history tells us, there's a limit to how fast species can adapt. |
| Polar bears need sea ice to hunt so the shrinking of Arctic sea ice is endangering their populations. | Polar bear numbers have increased so they're in no danger from global warming. | Oversimplification: one threat (hunting) has been removed but replaced with an ever increasing threat (melting sea ice). |
| Climate change will impact all parts of society. Coastal flooding will impact millions. Glacier retreats will threaten water supplies in Central Asia and South America. Hundreds of millions of people will be at risk of increased water stress, and more damage from droughts, heat waves and floods | Global warming is good | Cherry picking: focusing on a few good impacts of global warming and ignoring the overwhelming number of bad impacts. |
| A pollutant is any substance that disrupts the environment - CO2 does that by trapping heat. | CO2 is not a pollutant | Red herring: quibbling over technical definitions of pollutant is a distraction from the realities of the negative impacts of global warming. |
| CC impacts agriculture through extreme weather: heat stress and flooding | CO2 is plant food | Oversimplification: CO2 fertilisation is just one factor affecting plant growth, we need to consider full picture which shows that negative impacts outweigh benefits |
| Risk from extreme weather is increasing, albeit some forms of extreme weather are more confidently linked to global warming than overs. | Extreme weather not linked to global warming | Jumping to conclusions: just because extreme weather happened in the past doesn't mean the risk from heatwaves isn't increasing. |
