CLIMATE MYTHS

This is likely the most common myth. Our planet has indeed gone through numerous climate cycles, from ice ages to elevated temperatures, known as Milankovitch Cycles. The natural climate cycles operate in periods of hundreds of thousands of years, whereas the change we are experiencing (and that is still increasing) has taken place in just the last two centuries.

Our temperature is currently rising 10 times faster than it did at the last global mass extinction, about 56 million years ago. Since humans have been keeping climate records, 17 of the 18 hottest years have taken place since 2001. What we are experiencing today is not part of the Earth’s natural cycles and is totally outside the historical record.

The Earth’s natural processes emit about 750 billion tonnes of CO2 each year, while humans only emit about 35 billion tonnes. So it would seem at first glance that we are not the cause of climate change. However, the key fact is that the earth’s natural processes are balanced with one another. CO2 is released and then absorbed by a number of processes at a relatively balanced level. The additional CO2 and other warming gasses that humans are releasing, however, are not part of this balance so they remain in the atmosphere, creating overall global warming.

The overwhelming majority of scientists who study climate and related fields agree that climate change is happening and that humans are the primary cause. A 2021 study from Cornell University of thousands of peer-reviewed studies on climate change found that 99% agreed that climate change is caused by humans.

The earth’s tilt and orbit varies in predictable cycles. These cycles do cause increases and decreases in the energy reaching the earth. However, these cycles are measured in tens or hundreds of thousands of years and cannot explain the exponential rise in temperatures during the last two hundred years. 2020, for example, was one of the hottest years on record, yet the solar radiation reaching the earth was the lowest it has been since 1750.

In the 1970’s, in the early days of climate science, some scientists believed that global warming was due to increase solar activity. However, now more than 40 years later we have clear data that the amount of energy reaching our planet from the sun has actually been decreasing, while temperatures have been rising. The sun is clearly not the cause of climate change.

A recent comprehensive study of past models indicated that over 80% of climate models closely matched future observations. If anything, climate models have been too conservative in their predictions. Most often, real world data has proven to be at or past the most extreme end of predictions.

A small rise in overall global temperature, even 1°, can lead to large increases in local temperature as many places around the world have already experienced.

Small global increases will directly cause: rapidly rising sea levels, threatening many of the world’s largest cities with being underwater; extreme weather events such as forest fires, flooding and storms; and massive species die-offs.

Additionally, climate change will indirectly cause global food shortages, unprecedented mass migration, huge areas of uninhabitable land, more frequent health crises including pandemics, and economic losses on a scale never before seen.

Science has calculated that we must keep the global temperature rise under 1.5° (or 2° at most) above pre-industrial levels to avoid catastrophic outcomes. We are currently at 1.2°.

To put this in perspective, the temperature during the last global ice age was only about 5° cooler than our climate today.

The most important thing to know is that climate change is not a simple win/lose equation. We have already warmed our climate by about 1.2° over pre-industrial temperatures. It is very unlikely we will succeed in keeping below 1.5°. However, every fraction of a degree we can keep our temperature down will have dramatic impacts. The difference between a 2° increase and a 3° increase may be measured in billions of lives and millions of species. The difference between a 3° increase and 5° increase may be the difference between human survival and extinction. Every action we take right now matters.

By now, most everyone in the world has directly experienced the early effects of climate change, effects that are only going to increase in severity and frequency. In BC, we’ve experienced unparalleled heat, fires and flooding within the last year. Whole towns have burned down. Thousands of British Columbians are already climate refugees, unable to return to their homes. Around the world, millions are already climate refugees. Unless we act quickly, this number will grow to billions.

This myth is born out of the misconception that climate change will simply warm up our sometimes frosty country a little bit. In reality, the impact of climate change is predicted to be more severe in northern countries (such as Canada) than in much of the world, warming here by 6-10° by the end of the century compared with 2-6° globally. The severe heat dome, fires and flooding of 2021 are just a glimpse of what the common reality of life in BC will be if we don’t act now.

While climate change cannot be proven to cause or magnify all extreme weather events, it has been proven to increase the frequency and severity of extreme weather around the world, including forest fires, floods, major storms, heat waves and heat domes and the effects of rising sea levels.

This site details which extreme weather events have been proven to be linked to climate change: https://www.carbonbrief.org/mapped-how-climate-change-affects-extreme-weather-around-the-world/

Climate change incorporates not only the overall increase in global temperature, but all of the increasingly extreme weather caused by an excess build-up of warming gasses in our atmosphere, including some areas that will experience colder temperatures. The term “global warming” is always based on global temperatures, so cold weather locally in not an indication of a lack of global warming. On a global level, there is no question that our climate is warming rapidly.

Plants do require CO2 to photosynthesize light and plants on land in and in water store huge amounts of carbon. But they are limited in how much they can store and that limit is naturally in balance with the CO2 that is naturally emitted. CO2 itself is not the problem and it is needed for life. The problem is when there is a large excess of CO2 (and other warming gasses) in the atmosphere due to human activities.

China is currently the country with the largest GHG emissions, but with a population of about 1.4 billion, China’s per person emissions are about one third of Canada’s (5 tonnes in China versus 14 tonnes in Canada). India, also with a population of about 1.4 billion, is the third largest total emitter but has a tiny per person average of just 3 tonnes per person.

This also only considers current annual emissions. If we consider total historical CO2e emissions, the US is far and away the biggest polluter at 25% of global cumulative emissions, with the EU (including all EU countries) at 22%, then China at 13% and Russia at 6%. Canada, despite making up about 0.5% of the world’s population, has accounted for a hugely disproportionate 2% of total historical CO2e emissions.

So yes: China and India matter a lot. But on an individual or household basis, which is what you have direct control over, what we do in Canada matters more than people in almost every other country in the world.

Science is an evolving process that sometimes makes mistakes as it learns and grows. This is, in fact, a healthy part of the scientific process. However, by the time science reaches the level of overall consensus it now has (and has had for some time) regarding climate change, with huge amounts of supporting data from real world observations, it should be considered accurate.

Of the tens of thousands of experts from around the world, from different nations, with different religions and beliefs, 99% agree that climate change is real and caused by humans. If you do not trust this level of scientific consensus, you should also not trust any type of technology or medicine, all of which were created by science.

Renewable energy used to be expensive and impractical, but both of those claims are now incorrect. Today, renewable energy in many parts of the world (including Canada) is as cheap or cheaper than any other form of energy. If you removed the numerous subsidies given to oil and gas to keep them competitive (including by BC and Canada), renewables are almost always considerably cheaper.

In the 1970’s, a number of headlines reported that an ice age was coming. There are two things to know about this. First, even at the time, these headlines represented a small minority of scientists and were sensationalistic. Second, climate science at that time was in its earliest infancy. By the year 2000, climate science had matured and a clear majority of experts were raising the alarm about climate change. Today, 99% of experts agree that climate change is happening and is caused by humans. This is supported by an abundance of real world observations.

1934 was a hot year in the US, but not globally. It is sometimes cherry-picked as an example that temperatures have always been hot, or that they are not hotter these days than in the past. 1934 was an average year globally for temperature. And ironically, even in the US, 1934 is far from being the hottest year on record, ranking behind 2012, 2016, 2017, 2021, 2015, 2020, 2006 and 1998 (in order).

The actions of individuals, governments and business all matter in the urgent need to lower CO2e emissions. In Canada, households produce about 20% of our total national emissions and we have among the highest per person CO2e emissions average in the developed world.

What’s more, we get to decide who our elected leaders are, how we spend our money and what we prioritize in our lifestyle, so really we have the capacity to direct all three areas (household, government and business).