Myths about climate

Global heating is the biggest challenge facing our planet and yet there is a lot of misinformation about it. As part of our #Do1Thing campaign we checked out some of the biggest climate change myths. Social affairs correspondent Will Hayward reports

IT MAY seem strange that this article even needs to exist. The evidence that humans are causing climate change is overwhelming so why is there still a debate over its authenticity?

A major issue is that action to combat climate change will involve a shift away from industries like oil.

Because of this many people have had a vested financial interest in casting doubt on what is scientific fact.

In the age of social media this misinformation can circulate very quickly and it has led to a number of myths about global heating and the role played by humans.

We have gone through some of the most common myths about climate change and debunked them.

1. ‘Earth warmer’

Let’s start with an easy one. Yes, the planet is unequivocally getting warmer.

To start with let’s just look at 2019. In the UK last year there were two all-time temperature records:

■ Warmest winter day on record: 21.2°C recorded at Kew Gardens on February 26

■ Hottest day on record: 38.7°C recorded at Cambridge University Botanic Gardens on July 25

Eight high temperature records have been broken in the last decade.

isn’t actually getting

2. ‘The climate had changed before’

This is a really common one. Once climate deniers realised they could no longer feasibly argue the planet wasn’t warming they switched to pretending it wasn’t caused by human activity.

People often say “Earth’s temperature is constantly changing” before then adding that it is “nothing to do with humans”.

The reason this myth seems to have caught on is that there is some truth in the statement, though it is very misleading.

According to the website SkepticalScience over the course of Earth’s 4.5-billion-year history, the climate has changed a lot.

However, the very fast warming we are seeing now can’t be explained by natural cycles of warming and cooling. The kind of changes that would normally happen over hundreds of thousands of years are happening in decades.

If deniers really want to look at warming in the past they will be faced with a stark warning.

Greenhouse gases, (mainly CO2, but also methane), were involved in most of the climate changes in Earth’s past.

When they have jumped rapidly, the subsequent global heating that resulted caused mass extinctions. One of these, the Permian extinction, wiped out 95% of marine and 70% of land species.

Today we are emitting quantities of CO2 faster than even the most destructive climate changes in our planet’s past.

3. ‘Not all scientists agree that global warming is man made’ Scientists are always trying to prove each other wrong. It is literally their job.

It is quite staggering the sheer number of scientists and experts who agree that climate change is both happening and is caused by humans.

The last big report by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change lists 829 authors. These are the leading experts in their field and warn that climate change poses devastating risks to our way of life through the loss of species, rising sea levels and damage to our health, food security, water supply and economic future.

They say that global warming is likely to reach 1.5C between 2030 and 2052 and urge governments to act now to prevent further catastrophic rises in the future.

Studies have found that around 97 in 100 scientists now agree that humans are responsible for climate change. To choose to ignore the advice of the 97% is to choose to ignore the best information we have.

If you were having an operation you would want to use the technique that all credible experts agree with – the same should be true with the environment.

4. ‘It is changes in the sun that are causing Earth to warm’

This is another really commonly stated argument that humans are not causing global warming.

Climate change deniers argue that because of an increase in sun activity this has caused the recent warming on Earth.

Unfortunately for them the evidence says the exact opposite.

Over the last 35 years the sun has actually shown a cooling trend but global temperatures continue to increase.

5. ‘How can the world be getting warmer? It is really cold today’ You probably know someone who has said on a cold day: “Brrrr, it is cold out there, so much for global warming.”

This is a deeply misguided view. Saying it is cold where I am therefore climate change is not happening is like saying:

■ “I don’t have a job so employment is not rising.”

■ “Cars are not more advanced because I have a puncture.”

Long-term temperature trends are a far more reliable way of measuring warming than just looking out of the window on a particular day, on one part of the planet and thinking “that looks cold”.

In defence of people who subscribe to the view that cold = no global warming there are things that may suggest that is right.

In 2018 the record for the lowest maximum temperature for a March day was set in Tredegar, when there was a temperature high of -4.7C (23.5F) on March 1 during the “Beast from the East”.

However, this actually offers more evidence for climate change rather than the contrary. Scientists predict our greenhouse gas emissions will cause more volatile weather, so don’t be surprised if you see more and more records broken in both directions.

6. ‘The ice caps are increasing’

For this one, we can look at President Trump. Judging by his tweets, he has a borderline obsession with talking about ice caps.

But in recent decades, sea ice in the Arctic Ocean has been melting faster than it re-freezes in winter.

The IPCC’s special report on oceans found that:

There is “very high confidence” that Arctic sea ice has declined in all months of the year and around half the summer loss is due to humancaused warming.

Greenland melt is unprecedented in at least 350 years.

When looking at Antarctica (which is a continent covered in ice) it is important to distinguish between sea ice and land ice.

Land ice is the ice which has accumulated over thousands of years on the Antarctica landmass through snowfall. This land ice is actually stored ocean water that once evaporated before falling as snow.

Sea ice is ice that forms from salt water in winter and then almost melts entirely in summer.

Unlike sea ice, when land ice melts it increases sea levels. The amount of land ice in Antarctica is decreasing.

The amount of Antarctic sea ice is increasing even though the Southern Ocean is warming faster than any other ocean.

So why is the amount of sea ice increasing if the sea is getting warmer?

According to SkepticalScience one of the contributing factors is that the hole in the ozone layer above the South Pole has caused