Global Warming & Climate Change Myths
Here is a summary of global warming and climate change myths, sorted by recent popularity vs what science says. Click the response for a more detailed response. You can also view them sorted by taxonomy, by popularity, in a print-friendly version, with short URLs or with fixed numbers you can use for permanent references.
In the last 35 years of global warming, sun and climate have been going in opposite directions
Negative impacts of global warming on agriculture, health & environment far outweigh any positives.
97% of climate experts agree humans are causing global warming.
All the indicators show that global warming is still happening.
Models successfully reproduce temperatures since 1900 globally, by land, in the air and the ocean.
Global warming will cause mass extinctions of species that cannot adapt on short time scales.
Every part of the Earth's climate system has continued warming since 1998, with 2015 shattering temperature records.
Satellites measure Antarctica losing land ice at an accelerating rate.
The vast majority of climate papers in the 1970s predicted warming.
CO2 didn't initiate warming from past ice ages but it did amplify the warming.
Net positive feedback is confirmed by many different lines of evidence.
Ocean acidification threatens entire marine food chains.
Recent studies agree that recent global temperatures are unprecedented in the last 1000 years.
A number of investigations have cleared scientists of any wrongdoing in the media-hyped email incident.
There is increasing evidence that hurricanes are getting stronger due to global warming.
Al Gore's book is quite accurate, and far more accurate than contrarian books.
Most glaciers are retreating, posing a serious problem for millions who rely on glaciers for water.
Cosmic rays show no trend over the last 30 years & have had little impact on recent global warming.
1934 was one of the hottest years in the US, not globally.
A local cold day has nothing to do with the long-term trend of increasing global temperatures.
Extreme weather events are being made more frequent and worse by global warming.
A variety of different measurements find steadily rising sea levels over the past century.
Globally averaged temperature now is higher than global temperature in medieval times.
Mars is not warming globally.
Thick Arctic sea ice is undergoing a rapid retreat.
The strong CO2 effect has been observed by many different measurements.
Climate scientists could make far more money in other careers - most notably, working for the oil industry.
Ancient natural cycles are irrelevant for attributing recent global warming to humans.
The natural cycle adds and removes CO2 to keep a balance; humans add extra CO2 without removing any.
Numerous papers have documented how IPCC predictions are more likely to underestimate the climate response.
Rising CO2 increases atmospheric water vapor, which makes global warming much worse.
Polar bears are in danger of extinction as well as many other species.
The benefits of a price on carbon outweigh the costs several times over.
There are many lines of evidence indicating global warming is unequivocal.
Other parts of the earth got colder when Greenland got warmer.
Through its impacts on the climate, CO2 presents a danger to public health and welfare, and thus qualifies as an air pollutant
Greenland on the whole is losing ice, as confirmed by satellite measurement.
The effects of enhanced CO2 on terrestrial plants are variable and complex and dependent on numerous factors
There are multiple lines of direct observations that humans are causing global warming.
Thick arctic sea ice is in rapid retreat.
Mars and Jupiter are not warming, and anyway the sun has recently been cooling slightly.
There is long-term correlation between CO2 and global temperature; other effects are short-term.
Scientists have determined that the factors which caused the Little Ice Age cooling are not currently causing global warming.
Global temperature is still rising and 2010 was the hottest recorded.
Climate has changed along with CO2 levels through geological time.
Early 20th century warming is due to several causes, including rising CO2.
Aerosols have been masking global warming, which would be worse otherwise.
A cold day in Chicago in winter has nothing to do with the trend of global warming.
No known natural forcing fits the fingerprints of observed warming except anthropogenic greenhouse gases.
Multiple sets of independent observations find a human fingerprint on climate change.
Most glaciers are in rapid retreat worldwide, notwithstanding a few complicated cases.
The PDO shows no trend, and therefore the PDO is not responsible for the trend of global warming.
We see a clear "short-term hot spot" - there's various evidence for a "long-term hot spot".
Weather and climate are different; climate predictions do not need weather detail.
Glaciers are in rapid retreat worldwide, despite 1 error in 1 paragraph in a 1000 page IPCC report.
The greenhouse effect is standard physics and confirmed by observations.
Evidence is building that net cloud feedback is likely positive and unlikely to be strongly negative.
Those who contribute the least greenhouse gases will be most impacted by climate change.
That human CO2 is causing global warming is known with high certainty & confirmed by observations.
The oceans are warming and moreover are becoming more acidic, threatening the food chain.
The IPCC statement on Amazon rainforests was correct, and was incorrectly reported in some media.
Globally about 1% of coral is dying out each year.
Humans emit 100 times more CO2 than volcanoes.
Direct measurements find that rising CO2 is trapping more heat.
When Greenland was 3 to 5 degrees C warmer than today, a large portion of the Ice Sheet melted.
Many substances are dangerous even in trace amounts; what really matters is the total amount of CO2 in the atmosphere.
Around 97% of climate experts agree that humans are causing global warming.
Methane plays a minor role in global warming but could get much worse if permafrost starts to melt.
Excess CO2 from human emissions has a long residence time of over 100 years
CO2 levels are measured by hundreds of stations across the globe, all reporting the same trend.
Multiple lines of independent evidence indicate humidity is rising and provides positive feedback.
CO2 is increasing rapidly, and is reaching levels not seen on the earth for millions of years.
Land use plays a minor role in climate change, although carbon sequestration may help to mitigate.
The 'decline' refers to a decline in northern tree-rings, not global temperature, and is openly discussed in papers and the IPCC reports.
'Global warming' and 'climate change' mean different things and have both been used for decades.
Global warming worsens wildfires by creating drier conditions with more fuel for fires to spread further and faster.
The ocean is absorbing massive amounts of CO2, and is becoming more acidic as a result.
Theory, models and direct measurement confirm CO2 is currently the main driver of climate change.
Monckton used the IPCC equation in an inappropriate manner.
And the sun has been recently cooling.
The actual data show high northern latitudes are warmer today than in 1940.
If every nation agrees to limit CO2 emissions, we can achieve significant cuts on a global scale.
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.
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.
Microsite influences on temperature changes are minimal; good and bad sites show the same trend.
Lindzen and Choi’s paper is viewed as unacceptably flawed by other climate scientists.
Phil Jones was misquoted.
The iris hypothesis has not withstood the test of time - subsequent research has found that if it exists, the effect is much smaller than originally hypothesized, and may even slightly amplify rather than reducing global warming.
A large amount of warming is delayed, and if we don’t act now we could pass tipping points.
This is a detail that is complex, local, and irrelevant to the observed global warming trend.
Soot stays in the atmosphere for days to weeks; carbon dioxide causes warming for centuries.
Jim Hansen had several possible scenarios; his mid-level scenario B was right.
This is a complex aerosol effect with unclear temperature significance.
There is no evidence that climate has chaotic “regimes” on a long-term basis.
Volcanoes have had no warming effect in recent global warming - if anything, a cooling effect.
Around 97% of climate experts agree that humans are causing global warming.
The 'OISM petition' was signed by only a few climatologists.
Stomatal data is not as direct as ice core measurements and hence not as precise.
Arctic sea ice has shrunk by an area equal to Western Australia, and summer or multi-year sea ice might be all gone within a decade.
The claim sea level isn’t rising is based on blatantly doctored graphs contradicted by observations.
Weather is chaotic but climate is driven by Earth's energy imbalance, which is more predictable.
The IPCC simply updated their temperature history graphs to show the best data available at the time.
Ozone has only a small effect.
Modern scientists, not anti-science skeptics, follow in Galileo’s footsteps.
113 nations signed onto the 2007 IPCC report, which is simply a summary of the current body of climate science evidence.
Benny Peiser, the Oreskes critic, retracted his criticism.
A number of renewable sources already do provide baseload power, and we don't need renewables to provide a large percentage of baseload power immediately.
Trenberth is talking about the details of energy flow, not whether global warming is happening.
By breathing out, we are simply returning to the air the same CO2 that was there to begin with.
Melting ice leads to more sunlight being absorbed by water, thus heating the Arctic.
Soares looks at short-term trends which are swamped by natural variations while ignoring the long-term correlation.
Multiple lines of evidence make it very clear that the rise in atmospheric CO2 is due to human emissions.
The 97% consensus has been independently confirmed by a number of different approaches and lines of evidence.
This argument uses regional temperature data that ends in 1855, long before modern global warming began.
The sun has just had the deepest solar minimum in 100 years.
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.
CO2 levels are rising so fast that unless we decrease emissions, global warming will accelerate this century.
Many climate solutions are cheaper than the alternatives before even accounting for the trillions of dollars saved by reducing climate and air pollution.
That humans are causing the rise in atmospheric CO2 is confirmed by multiple isotopic analyses.
Greenhouse warming is adding 100 times more heat to the climate than waste heat.
Winter snow cover in 2008/2009 was average while the long-term trend in spring, summer, and annual snow cover is rapid decline.
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.
The global trend is calculated from hundreds of CO2 measuring stations and confirmed by satellites.
If anyone claims to be part of the 97 percent, it means they disagree with the contrarian argument that humans are having a minimal impact on global warming.
Blaming global warming on the movements of other planets is little more than 'climastrology' and curve fitting without a physical basis.
Venus very likely underwent a runaway or ‘moist’ greenhouse phase earlier in its history, and today is kept hot by a dense CO2 atmosphere.
Positive feedback won't lead to runaway warming; diminishing returns on feedback cycles limit the amplification.
Official records, Editors and emails suggest CRU scientists acted in the spirit if not the letter of IPCC rules.
This detail is irrelevant to the observation of global warming caused by humans.
Many lines of evidence, including simple accounting, demonstrate beyond a shadow of a doubt that the increase in atmospheric CO2 is due to human fossil fuel burning.
The sun was much cooler during the Ordovician.
Thousands of coral atolls have "drowned" when unable to grow fast enough to survive at sea level.
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.
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.
Recent warming is due to rising CO2.
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.
CFCs contribute at a small level.
Investment in renewable energy creates more jobs than investment in fossil fuel energy.
The Schmittner et al. study finds low probability of both very low and very high climate sensitivities, and its lower estimate (as compared to the IPCC) is based on a new temperature reconstruction of the Last Glacial Maximum that may or may not withstand the test of time.
The Siddall 2009 paper was retracted because its predicted sea level rise was too low.
The 97% consensus on human-caused global warming is a robust result using two independent methods (volunteer abstract ratings and scientist self-ratings) and consistent with similar previous surveys.
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.
Natural cycles superimposed on a linear warming trend can be mistaken for step changes, but the underlying warming is caused by the external radiative forcing.
Current Arctic sea ice extent is the lowest in the past several thousand years.
The data and research are unclear whether climate change is increasing extreme weather damage costs, but many types of extreme weather are becoming more intense and/or frequent, and disaster costs from extreme weather events are rising.
CO2 and corresponding water vapor feedback are the biggest cause of global warming.
All of the statements made in the IPCC report regarding the figure in question are correct and supported.
Satellite transmissions are extremely small and irrelevant.
Hansen was speculating on changes that might happen if CO2 doubled.
Global warming is increasing the frequency, duration and intensity of heatwaves.
Humans have been through climate changes before- but mostly cold ones and mostly in our far distant past.
The IPCC 95% confidence that humans are responsible for most of the current global warming is simply a summary of the peer-reviewed scientific research.
Ljungqvist's temperature reconstruction is very similar to other reconstructions by Moberg and Mann.
Loehle and Scafetta's paper is nothing more than a curve fitting exercise with no physical basis using an overly simplistic model.
Postma's model contains many simple errors; in no way does Postma undermine the existence or necessity of the greenhouse effect.
Removing CO2 would cause most water in the air to rain out and cancel most of the greenhouse effect.
The most likely explanation for UAH data warming less than expected is that the UAH data set is biased low.
The amount of heat energy coming out of the Earth is too small to even be worth considering.
Akasofu provided no physical explanation for the supposed "recovery" from the Little Ice Age, nor did he explain how the increased greenhouse effect isn't causing global warming.
Animal agriculture is responsible for only 14 to 18% of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions globally, compared to 60% from fossil fuel burning.
Current Arctic sea ice decline is far greater than any decline earlier in the 20th Century.
The 2012 Arctic storm only impacted sea ice because of the long-term, human-caused deterioration of Arctic sea ice.
BEST data shows an approximately 0.3°C per decade global warming trend over land.
An average acre of solar panels in the United States reduced approximately 204–231 times more carbon dioxide per year than an acre of forest.
Climate 'skeptics' including Patrick Michaels are the ones who have been guilty of true pal review in the journal Climate Research from 1997 to 2003.
The majority of EVs can travel roughly 200 miles on a single charge and some models can travel over 400 miles on a single charge, more than enough to meet the daily needs of median U.S. households.
Extreme temperatures can decrease EV range, particularly extreme cold, but gasoline-powered cars are also susceptible to extreme weather conditions and EVs may actually be more reliable than gasoline-powered cars in the cold.
Electric vehicles have lower lifecycle emissions than traditional gasoline-powered cars because they are between 2.5 to 5.8 times more efficient, and are essential to reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
EV manufacturing need not result in fewer jobs in the U.S. automobile industry with over 179,000 announced U.S. jobs related to EVs and EV batteries from 2015 to 2023.
The electromagnetic fields generated at a solar farm are similar in strength and frequency to those of toaster ovens and other household appliances—and harmless to humans.
Multiple studies have found that the electromagnetic fields (EMFs) generated by wind turbines are lower than those generated by most common household appliances and that they easily meet rigorous international safety standards.
Himalayan glaciers supporting hundreds of millions of people are showing consistent loss of ice.
Soils managed holistically show no significant boost in productivity or overall storage of carbon over a long period of time and are therefore not a solution for climate change.
The overall warming of the global climate has continued at a rate equivalent to 4 Hiroshima atomic bomb detonations per second.
Global surface temperature measurements have fallen within the range of IPCC model projections.
The weight of the evidence suggests that there is no direct causal correlation between low-frequency noise from wind turbines and human health.
Lord Monckton has taken a single equation from the IPCC, used it in an inappropriate manner, and then attributed his results to the IPCC.
New studies showing climate sensitivity may not be high fail to account for the accelerated warming in the deep ocean, but their estimates are nevertheless within the IPCC expected range.
In the mid-20th Century, traversing the Northwest Passage was a difficult and dangerous endeavor, whereas today, virtually anyone can accomplish the passage.
CO2 warming is 10,000 times greater than the energy from every nuclear bomb ever exploded.
Wind turbines generate far less low-frequency sound than ships do and the main causes of mortality for right whales are vessel strikes and entanglements in fishing gear.
Maximum afforestation and reforestation (close to a trillion new trees) would sequester around 75 billion tons of carbon, which is 7–8 years of annual human emissions at current rates and enough to slow global warming by less than a quarter degree Celsius.
The average lifecycle emissions of coal is 77 times greater than wind energy.
Although the United States still imports a majority of the solar panels it installs, domestic solar manufacturing is on the rise and likely to grow further as manufacturers open factories in the U.S.
Thermometers are more reliable than satellites, so there!
Wind turbines operate between much lower than the threshold frequency typically required to cause a seizure and public-health studies have found that wind turbines do not cause seizures.
Solar development creates more jobs per unit of energy generated than other types of energy production, and renewable jobs will far exceed the jobs lost due to a shift away from fossil fuels.
Unsubsidized solar energy is now generally cheaper than fossil fuels and according to the International Energy Agency, solar PV is “the cheapest source of new electricity generation in most parts of the world."
an increasing number of planned solar projects are set to include an energy storage component, and solar, wind, and storage together can provide the majority of the country’s electricity without compromising reliability.
The lifecycle emissions of solar energy are far lower than fossil fuel sources, with the emissions of coal being 23 times greater than solar PV while the emissions of natural gas are 11 times greater than solar PV.
Solar panels generate energy even in cloudy or cold conditions, with cold temperatures actually increasing solar panel efficiency by increasing voltage.
Waste from solar panels is trivial compared to the waste generated by fossil fuels, with coal ash generating 300-800 times more waste, and oily sludge generating 2-5 times more waste than PVs.
When applying best practices for project design, large-scale solar farms can sustain and even increase local biodiversity by replanting indigenous flowering species that benefit insects, , mammals and ground nesting birds.
Solar deployment would utilize a relatively small percentage of U.S. land when compared to the land currently being used for agriculture.
There are several ways in which human-caused global warming contributed to the damage caused by Hurricane Sandy - by causing higher sea levels (bigger storm surges and flooding), warmer oceans (a stronger hurricane), and more moisture in the air (more flooding).
The Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources has assessed that there is little, if any, risk of chemical releases to the environment during normal use, and that all materials in a solar panel are "insoluble and non-volatile at ambient conditions," and "don’t mix with water or vaporize into air."
Data across multiple studies show that utility-scale solar projects only have a minor impact on the closest properties and no effect on properties more than a mile away.
Veganism has the potential to reduce global GHG emissions; however, it is not the only option and may not be the most achievable.
Multiple analyses have found that global mineral resources are likely sufficient to meet long-term demand across all energy transition sectors, including EVs and transmission.
Wind power is a fast-growing industry, employing roughly 120,000 U.S. workers in 2021 and creating roughly 5,400 new jobs (up 4.7%) since 2019.
As with solar energy, complete reliance on wind energy would pose intermittency challenges. However, wind, solar, and storage together can provide the majority of the country’s electricity without compromising reliability.
In the United States, onshore wind has the lowest unsubsidized levelized cost of energy (LCOE) of all utility-scale energy sources and the LCOE of offshore wind power has declined substantially over the past decade.
Wind power is a relatively minor source of mortality for birds compared to climate change, which threatens two-thirds of all North American bird species with a heightened risk of extinction.
Wind power offers farmers the opportunity to earn additional income from leasing out their land, while also growing crops or grazing livestock.
Turbine collapse or breakage are extremely rare, utilising safety mechanisms to survive extreme weather conditions, and the mortality rate from wind energy pales in comparison to the risks associated with fossil fuels.
Depending on distance, wind turbines are comparable in noise to typical household AC-units.
While there might initially be a small decrease in property values, the effect all but disappears with time and distance from a wind project and the presence of a fossil fuel fired power plant has greater impact on property values.
The wind turbines require less land per kilowatt-hour generated than fossil fuels and the land required for net-zezro emissions will have a notably smaller footprint than the 4.4 million acres currently used for natural gas extraction and the 3.5 million acres for oil extraction.
Roughly 85% of the mass of a wind turbine, including the tower, gearbox, and generator, consist of metals that are easily recycled.
Many thanks to Dr. Jan Dash, Director of the UU-UNO's Climate Portal for writing many of the one line responses in 'What the Science Says', with some edits by John Cook.
THE ESCALATOR
(free to republish)