For years, people have questioned the legitimacy of climate change. How much of what we know about climate change is true and what rumors have experts declared nothing but a myth?
Growing up, I always looked forward to the winter months. I couldn’t wait for the first snowfall. Bundled in a long-sleeve shirt, thermal pants, a puffy pink winter coat, thick black snow pants, chunky snow boots, warm gloves, and the biggest hat I could find, I made the trek into my snow-covered yard in Noblesville, Indiana.
The lamps on the street made the snowflakes sparkle as they fell from the sky. For hours, my sisters and I would play in the yard building giant snow forts, competing in snowball fight tournaments, and building families of snowmen. But as the years went on, our snowmen families grew smaller and smaller as the snowfall got lighter and lighter.
Jim Poyser, executive director of Earth Charter Indiana, recognized the change in snowfall as well.
“Growing up in South Bend, I remember tunneling through the snowfall and building forts in the winter time. That just doesn’t happen anymore. Kids growing up now don’t get that experience,” Poyser says.
According to a study conducted by the American Geophysical Union, average annual snowfall in the United States decreased by approximately 41% from 1982 to 2016.
Decline in annual snowfall is just one of the many impacts of climate change across our country and the entire globe. However, when it comes to the topic of climate change, there is a lot of misinformation out there. Sometimes it can be difficult to distinguish the facts from the myths.
“I don’t think as a society we have the time or the desire to truly comprehend a topic as complex as climate change,” says Ball State University Professor Adam Kuban.
To Kuban’s point, a lot of the information that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) produces is publically accessible information. The facts are all there, but the complex language and terminology are often too difficult for the average person to digest.
Kuban explains that climate change is an extremely complex topic. It can be difficult to sort through the muck to find the truth. And, quite frankly, most people simply don’t have the time or the patience. So what’s the truth? Here is a cheat sheet to some of the commonly confused facts and myths about climate change.
Myth: There have always been fluctuations in climate just like this in the past, so there is no need to worry now.
Greenhouse gases are gases in our atmosphere that soak up the sun and trap heat similar to a greenhouse. They have always been involved in changes in the Earth’s climate. When greenhouse gas levels increased in the past, temperatures consistently got warmer. With CO2 emissions higher now than ever, temperatures have increased substantially. NASA found that the global temperature rose a staggering 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit from 1880 to 2018.
Global surface temperature change over the past 50 years (°C)
Although the temperatures fluctuate daily, this steady increase in the average global temperature over the last century has never been seen before. According to a study conducted by the Union of Concerned Scientists, assuming that the population doesn’t change, the number of people who experience 30 or more days with a heat index above 105°F in an average year will increase from just under 900,000 to more than 90 million, which is almost one-third of the United States population. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, temperatures this high could potentially cause a loss of crops, an increase in electricity shortages and blackouts, an increase in droughts, a spike in annual forest fires, and an increase in heat-related illnesses such as heat cramps and heat stroke.
Fact: Climate change is at least partially human-caused.
A study conducted by the Rhodium Group estimates carbon emissions increased by 3.4% in 2018. This increase marks the second largest annual gain in more than two decades — surpassed only by 2010 when the economy was recovering from the Great Recession. In 2016, the U.S. Energy Information Administration ranked Indiana 8th highest in CO2 emissions, pumping approximately 182 million metric tons of CO2 into the atmosphere — equivalent to the weight of more than 100 million elephants.
According to the IPCC, this increase in CO2 emissions is directly linked to a steady rise in global temperature. Although measuring exactly how much the human race has contributed to global warming is impossible, human-caused rise in CO2 levels is directly correlated to the spike in global temperature.
Myth: Climate change isn’t really that bad.
Climate change is proven to have negative effects on many different aspects of the environment including sea level rise, ocean acidification, underwater animal and plant species, and oceanic dead zones.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) found that sea levels have undoubtedly risen over the past century, and the rate has increased in recent decades. In 2018, global mean sea level was 3.2 inches higher than the average in 1993. 2018 marked the 25th year in which global mean sea level increased relative to the previous year. According to NOAA, due to the rise in sea levels, nuisance flooding is now 300% to more than 900% more frequent than it was 50 years ago in many locations along the U.S. coastline. Maybe the Jonas Brothers weren’t too far off when they predicted we’d be living underwater in their hit song “Year 3000.”
According to NOAA, our oceans absorb approximately 30% of CO2 emissions. As a result, climate change is literally changing the chemistry of our oceans. This is known as ocean acidification. Ocean acidification bleaches coral reefs and endangers many underwater plant and animal species. The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) found that in total, approximately 1 million plant and animal species are at risk of becoming endangered or extinct due to climate change.
IPBES also found that plastic pollution has played a role in polluting our oceans, too, increasing tenfold since 1980. Approximately 400 million tons of heavy metals, solvents, toxic sludge, and other wastes from industrial facilities are dumped annually into the world’s waters, and fertilizers entering coastal ecosystems have produced more than 400 ocean ‘dead zones,’ which are areas of the ocean that are so polluted they have become uninhabitable.
Fact: There is a negative correlation between age and concern about climate change
According to the results of a study conducted by Gallup, Americans’ generally low level of concern about global warming compared with other environmental issues is not new. In fact, the increase in global temperature has ranked last among Americans’ climate concerns each time Gallup has measured them with this question since 1989. Most recently, 34% of Americans surveyed were concerned about global warming.
One possible explanation as to why so many Americans are not worried about the change in climate is because it poses no immediate threat to them. According to The Climate Chat Organization, humans are wired to respond to immediate, personal threats. Since climate change poses a lot of future-based threats, many people choose not to concern themselves with it, at least for the time being.
In general, young Americans aged 18 to 29 are more worried about global warming than older adults, particularly those 50 and older.
“We are on the very cusp of climate catastrophe. We need to teach our youth not only what is going on but also potential ways to deal with it. After all, it will be the young people who make the change. It’s our youth that are initiating these ever-so important conversations about climate change,” Poyser says.
Myth: Glaciers are actually growing.
Glaciers all across the planet are losing ice at an extensive rate. While there are certain cases in which glaciers gain ice in one specific region, the long term trends all point to the same conclusion — about 90% of glaciers are shrinking worldwide, according to the World Glacier Monitoring Service.
According to NASA, the total global ice mass lost from all the Earth’s glaciers and ice caps from 2003 to 2010 was about 4.3 trillion tons, tacking about 0.5 inches onto the global sea level.
The potential negative impacts of this extreme melting of glaciers include shortage of freshwater, excessive flooding, extinction of animals, destruction of coral reefs, and disruption of weather patterns.
Fact: It’s not too late to make a change.
“This is one of the biggest challenges humanity as a race has ever faced. We need as many different types of intelligences as possible to work together to solve this problem,” says Poyser.
“It is out of our hopelessness and sense of helplessness when we see the damage we’ve done to our planet that our desire to not give up is born.”
Kuban says there is no way to predict the exact date that the climate catastrophe will take an intense turn for the worse. Many advocacy groups and politicians have tried to predict the exact day when it will be impossible for humans to reverse the damage that they’ve done to the planet, but none of them can actually be proven.
For the time being, there are countless steps that you can take in your day-to-day life to reduce your own carbon footprint while experts work on more extreme and permanent ways to reverse the impacts of climate change.
