Unfortunately, we live in an era where people feel that simple Google searches, YouTube videos and social media statements make them more educated than industry professionals that have devoted their lives to research in areas that they specialise in.
We have people countering virologists and immunologists that have decades in their field, and peer-reviewed research with simple slogans and video snippets that they pass off as research.
This has also impacted climate change, which has been categorically proven by scientists time and time again, but continues to be scrutinised by Google and YouTube “researchers”. Here are the biggest myths circulating through social media channels right now – and why they are baloney.
The climate has always changed – nothing is different
Well, duh. There have been cycles of extreme heat and cold occurring on our planet for millions and millions of years. But none of these patterns aligns with the current warming and extreme weather events we are seeing right now. The world is hotter than it has ever been since we started recording temperatures, and 17 out of the 18 hottest years on record have occurred since 2001.
The issue is debatable – there is no consensus
“There is no convincing scientific evidence …” we read time and time again on social media posts from the climate change sceptics. They say there is no consensus, but this is just twisting facts.
What a consensus means in a political sense does not exist in the scientific space. A political consensus means there is a vote held and the majority rules. Scientists didn’t cast votes on whether there is too much carbon in the sky or not – they are constantly working, researching, hypothesis and evolving.
But for what it is worth to people who need concrete numbers to be convinced, 97 per cent of scientific studies agree that climate change is real and humans are responsible for it.
The year 1934 was the hottest year on record
Sure, in the United States, but not globally. 2020 was the hottest year on record, tying with 2016. The overall average temperature globally has risen 2 degrees Fahrenheit since the 1880s. Your source for that? NASA.
CO2 is good for plants
It is. Just like apples are good for humans. But try and eat 100 apples. Try and survive when you are completely surrounded by apples. There needs to be a balance.
If there is too much carbon for plants and trees to handle, then it is going to be left in the atmosphere to choke us, perpetuate climate change and cause extreme weather events that can be life-threatening.
Global warming can’t be real when places are getting colder
This is where the sceptics get really clever. They point to a period in time around 2013 when scientists and politicians stopped calling it global warming and started calling it climate change. Aha! They bellowed and pointed like they had discovered the scientists with their hands in the cookie jar. You changed the name because the world is not getting hotter at all!
Actually, it was just a simple case of scientific institutions and the White House itself coining the term as a serious threat that needed to be actioned. The world is getting hotter – it is causing polar caps to melt and it leads to extreme weather events – which includes cold-weather events. You can put your finger down now.
