| Climate Myth | vs | What the Science Says |
2 | "It's the sun" | In the last 35 years of global warming, sun and climate have been going in opposite directions | |
4 | "There is no consensus" | 97% of climate experts agree humans are causing global warming. | |
6 | "Models are unreliable" | Models successfully reproduce temperatures since 1900 globally, by land, in the air and the ocean. | |
8 | "Animals and plants can adapt" | Global warming will cause mass extinctions of species that cannot adapt on short time scales. | |
10 | "Antarctica is gaining ice" | Satellites measure Antarctica losing land ice at an accelerating rate. | |
12 | "CO2 lags temperature" | CO2 didn't initiate warming from past ice ages but it did amplify the warming. | |
14 | "We're heading into an ice age" | Worry about global warming impacts in the next 100 years, not an ice age in over 10,000 years. | |
16 | "Hockey stick is broken" | Recent studies agree that recent global temperatures are unprecedented in the last 1000 years. | |
18 | "Hurricanes aren't linked to global warming" | There is increasing evidence that hurricanes are getting stronger due to global warming. | |
20 | "Glaciers are growing" | Most glaciers are retreating, posing a serious problem for millions who rely on glaciers for water. | |
22 | "1934 - hottest year on record" | 1934 was one of the hottest years in the US, not globally. | |
24 | "Extreme weather isn't caused by global warming" | Extreme weather events are being made more frequent and worse by global warming. | |
26 | "It's Urban Heat Island effect" | Urban and rural regions show the same warming trend. | |
28 | "Mars is warming" | Mars is not warming globally. | |
30 | "Increasing CO2 has little to no effect" | The strong CO2 effect has been observed by many different measurements. | |
32 | "Climate scientists are in it for the money" | Climate scientists could make far more money in other careers - most notably, working for the oil industry. | |
34 | "Human CO2 is a tiny % of CO2 emissions" | The natural cycle adds and removes CO2 to keep a balance; humans add extra CO2 without removing any. | |
36 | "Water vapor is the most powerful greenhouse gas" | Rising CO2 increases atmospheric water vapor, which makes global warming much worse. | |
38 | "CO2 limits will harm the economy" | The benefits of a price on carbon outweigh the costs several times over. | |
40 | "Greenland was green" | Other parts of the earth got colder when Greenland got warmer. | |
42 | "CO2 is not a pollutant" | Through its impacts on the climate, CO2 presents a danger to public health and welfare, and thus qualifies as an air pollutant | |
44 | "CO2 is plant food" | The effects of enhanced CO2 on terrestrial plants are variable and complex and dependent on numerous factors | |
46 | "Arctic sea ice has recovered" | Thick arctic sea ice is in rapid retreat. | |
48 | "We're coming out of the Little Ice Age" | Scientists have determined that the factors which caused the Little Ice Age cooling are not currently causing global warming. | |
50 | "Global warming stopped in 1998, 1995, 2002, 2007, 2010, ????" | Global temperature is still rising and 2010 was the hottest recorded. | |
52 | "It warmed before 1940 when CO2 was low" | Early 20th century warming is due to several causes, including rising CO2. | |
54 | "It's aerosols" | Aerosols have been masking global warming, which would be worse otherwise. | |
56 | "It's a natural cycle" | No known natural forcing fits the fingerprints of observed warming except anthropogenic greenhouse gases. | |
58 | "Mt. Kilimanjaro's ice loss is due to land use" | Most glaciers are in rapid retreat worldwide, notwithstanding a few complicated cases. | |
60 | "There's no tropospheric hot spot" | We see a clear "short-term hot spot" - there's various evidence for a "long-term hot spot". | |
62 | "Scientists can't even predict weather" | Weather and climate are different; climate predictions do not need weather detail. | |
64 | "IPCC were wrong about Himalayan glaciers" | Glaciers are in rapid retreat worldwide, despite 1 error in 1 paragraph in a 1000 page IPCC report. | |
66 | "CO2 limits will hurt the poor" | Those who contribute the least greenhouse gases will be most impacted by climate change. | |
68 | "The science isn't settled" | That human CO2 is causing global warming is known with high certainty & confirmed by observations. | |
70 | "It's the ocean" | The oceans are warming and moreover are becoming more acidic, threatening the food chain. | |
72 | "Corals are resilient to bleaching" | Globally about 1% of coral is dying out each year. | |
74 | "CO2 effect is saturated" | Direct measurements find that rising CO2 is trapping more heat. | |
76 | "500 scientists refute the consensus" | Around 97% of climate experts agree that humans are causing global warming. | |
78 | "It's methane" | Methane plays a minor role in global warming but could get much worse if permafrost starts to melt. | |
80 | "CO2 measurements are suspect" | CO2 levels are measured by hundreds of stations across the globe, all reporting the same trend. | |
82 | "Neptune is warming" | And the sun is cooling. | |
84 | "Springs aren't advancing" | Hundreds of flowers across the UK are flowering earlier now than any time in 250 years. | |
86 | "CO2 is not increasing" | CO2 is increasing rapidly, and is reaching levels not seen on the earth for millions of years. | |
88 | "Record snowfall disproves global warming" | Warming leads to increased evaporation and precipitation, which falls as increased snow in winter. | |
90 | "Solar Cycle Length proves its the sun" | The sun has not warmed since 1970 and so cannot be driving global warming. | |
92 | "IPCC overestimate temperature rise" | Monckton used the IPCC equation in an inappropriate manner. | |
94 | "CO2 is not the only driver of climate" | Theory, models and direct measurement confirm CO2 is currently the main driver of climate change. | |
96 | "CO2 limits will make little difference" | If every nation agrees to limit CO2 emissions, we can achieve significant cuts on a global scale. | |
98 | "Renewable energy is too expensive" | When you account for all of the costs associated with burning coal and other fossil fuels, like air pollution and health effects, in reality they are significantly more expensive than most renewable energy sources. | |
100 | "Sea level rise is decelerating" | Global sea level data shows that sea level rise has been increasing since 1880 while future sea level rise predictions are based on physics, not statistics. | |
102 | "It's microsite influences" | Microsite influences on temperature changes are minimal; good and bad sites show the same trend. | |
104 | "Phil Jones says no global warming since 1995" | Phil Jones was misquoted. | |
106 | "Dropped stations introduce warming bias" | If the dropped stations had been kept, the temperature would actually be slightly higher. | |
108 | "It's not urgent" | A large amount of warming is delayed, and if we don’t act now we could pass tipping points. | |
110 | "Tree-rings diverge from temperature after 1960" | This is a detail that is complex, local, and irrelevant to the observed global warming trend. | |
112 | "Roy Spencer finds negative feedback" | Spencer's model is too simple, excluding important factors like ocean dynamics and treats cloud feedbacks as forcings. | |
114 | "It's global brightening" | This is a complex aerosol effect with unclear temperature significance. | |
116 | "Arctic sea ice loss is matched by Antarctic sea ice gain" | Arctic sea ice loss is three times greater than Antarctic sea ice gain. | |
118 | "Solar cycles cause global warming" | Over recent decades, the sun has been slightly cooling & is irrelevant to recent global warming. | |
120 | "Less than half of published scientists endorse global warming" | Around 97% of climate experts agree that humans are causing global warming. | |
122 | "Plant stomata show higher and more variable CO2 levels" | Stomatal data is not as direct as ice core measurements and hence not as precise. | |
124 | "IPCC ‘disappeared’ the Medieval Warm Period" | The IPCC simply updated their temperature history graphs to show the best data available at the time. | |
126 | "It's ozone" | Ozone has only a small effect. | |
128 | "Freedom of Information (FOI) requests were ignored" | An independent inquiry found CRU is a small research unit with limited resources and their rigour and honesty are not in doubt. | |
130 | "The IPCC consensus is phoney" | 113 nations signed onto the 2007 IPCC report, which is simply a summary of the current body of climate science evidence. | |
132 | "Naomi Oreskes' study on consensus was flawed" | Benny Peiser, the Oreskes critic, retracted his criticism. | |
134 | "Trenberth can't account for the lack of warming" | Trenberth is talking about the details of energy flow, not whether global warming is happening. | |
136 | "CRU tampered with temperature data" | An independent inquiry went back to primary data sources and were able to replicate CRU's results. | |
138 | "Breathing contributes to CO2 buildup" | By breathing out, we are simply returning to the air the same CO2 that was there to begin with. | |
140 | "Soares finds lack of correlation between CO2 and temperature" | Soares looks at short-term trends which are swamped by natural variations while ignoring the long-term correlation. | |
142 | "Murry Salby finds CO2 rise is natural" | Multiple lines of evidence make it very clear that the rise in atmospheric CO2 is due to human emissions. | |
144 | "Most of the last 10,000 years were warmer" | This argument uses regional temperature data that ends in 1855, long before modern global warming began. | |
146 | "CO2 emissions do not correlate with CO2 concentration" | That humans are causing the rise in atmospheric CO2 is confirmed by multiple isotopic analyses. | |
148 | "Water vapor in the stratosphere stopped global warming" | This possibility just means that future global warming could be even worse. | |
150 | "An exponential increase in CO2 will result in a linear increase in temperature" | CO2 levels are rising so fast that unless we decrease emissions, global warming will accelerate this century. | |
152 | "A grand solar minimum could trigger another ice age" | Peer-reviewed research, physics, and math all tell us that a grand solar minimum would have no more than a 0.3°C cooling effect, barely enough to put a dent in human-caused global warming. | |
154 | "CERN CLOUD experiment proved cosmic rays are causing global warming" | The CERN CLOUD experiment only tested one-third of one out of four requirements necessary to blame global warming on cosmic rays, and two of the other requirements have already failed. | |
156 | "Venus doesn't have a runaway greenhouse effect" | Venus very likely underwent a runaway or ‘moist’ greenhouse phase earlier in its history, and today is kept hot by a dense CO2 atmosphere. | |
158 | "Water levels correlate with sunspots" | This detail is irrelevant to the observation of global warming caused by humans. | |
160 | "Antarctica is too cold to lose ice" | Glaciers are sliding faster into the ocean because ice shelves are thinning due to warming oceans. | |
162 | "Skeptics were kept out of the IPCC?" | Official records, Editors and emails suggest CRU scientists acted in the spirit if not the letter of IPCC rules. | |
164 | "Warming causes CO2 rise" | Recent warming is due to rising CO2. | |
166 | "It's internal variability" | Internal variability can only account for small amounts of warming and cooling over periods of decades, and scientific studies have consistently shown that it cannot account for the global warming over the past century. | |
168 | "No warming in 16 years" | Global surface temperatures have continued to rise steadily beneath short-term natural cooling effects, and the rise in global heat content has not slowed at all. | |
170 | "Scientists retracted claim that sea levels are rising" | The Siddall 2009 paper was retracted because its predicted sea level rise was too low. | |
172 | "CO2 limits won't cool the planet" | CO2 limits won't cool the planet, but they can make the difference between continued accelerating global warming to catastrophic levels vs. slowing and eventually stopping the warming at hopefully safe levels. | |
174 | "Greenland has only lost a tiny fraction of its ice mass" | Greenland's ice loss is accelerating & will add metres of sea level rise in upcoming centuries. | |
176 | "Ben Santer rewrote the 1995 IPCC report" | The IPCC operates by consensus. Ben Santer could not have and did not single-handedly alter the 1995 IPCC report. Accusations to the contrary are simply an attempt to re-write history. | |
178 | "Royal Society embraces skepticism" | The Royal Society still strongly state that human activity is the dominant cause of global warming. | |
180 | "It's satellite microwave transmissions" | Satellite transmissions are extremely small and irrelevant. | |
182 | "IPCC graph showing accelerating trends is misleading" | All of the statements made in the IPCC report regarding the figure in question are correct and supported. | |
184 | "Arctic sea ice extent was lower in the past" | Current Arctic sea ice extent is the lowest in the past several thousand years. | |
186 | "UAH atmospheric temperatures prove climate models and/or surface temperature data sets are wrong" | The most likely explanation for UAH data warming less than expected is that the UAH data set is biased low. | |
188 | "We didn't have global warming during the Industrial Revolution" | CO2 emissions were much smaller 100 years ago. | |
190 | "Hansen predicted the West Side Highway would be underwater" | Hansen was speculating on changes that might happen if CO2 doubled. | |
192 | "Great Barrier Reef is in good shape" | Evidence clearly shows that both ocean warming and acidification due to human CO2 emissions are damaging the Great Barrier Reef | |
194 | "Postma disproved the greenhouse effect" | Postma's model contains many simple errors; in no way does Postma undermine the existence or necessity of the greenhouse effect. | |
196 | "Humans survived past climate changes" | Humans have been through climate changes before- but mostly cold ones and mostly in our far distant past. | |