The world’s rapidly changing climate poses an existential threat to humanity and other sentient beings. While neutralising and reversing these threats requires unequivocal collective commitment from humanity, there is some misinformation out there that is undermining such efforts. In this column, the first part of the climate myth series, I will talk about several myths regarding climate change that need to be broken down for increased mitigation commitment.

 There is no scientific consensus that humans are causing climate change:

A lot of people (especially in the developed world) think that enough scientists do not agree on the basic principles of human-induced climate change. This couldn’t be farther from the truth. A 2013 meta-research, that analysed the abstracts of 12,000 studies related to climate science (that were published in peer-reviewed journals), found that there was a 97 percent consensus that human activities were destabilising the climate. Still, climate change scepticism is heavy in countries like the US and Australia where fossil fuel corporations have a lot of influence so that even the more honest media houses feel pressured to give equal space to climate change denying scientists in the name of ‘balanced coverage’. This media space has swayed many in the public to believe that climate change is a subject that only a few scientists agree on. To truly represent the issue fairly, however, media coverage needs to reflect the true proportion of scientists on either side of the issue—97 believers to every 3 deniers. Additionally, since much of such climate-denying science seems to be funded by fossil fuel corporations, policies that need scientists to disclose the funders behind their research are needed.

 The climate on Earth has always fluctuated, so climate change is a natural process:

It is true that in the last 4.5 billion years the Earth has seen several periods of warming and cooling. These changes, however, took place over centuries, allowing animals and plants enough time to adapt to their environment. However, this changed after the industrial revolution. Humans started releasing massive amounts of gases in the environment that trapped heat within Earth instead of letting it dissipate into space. This has led to rapid temperature increases within a short period of time. For example, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) of the US has estimated that the average temperature of Earth which increased at the rate of 0.07 degrees Celsius per decade (since 1880), doubled after the industrial revolution to 0.17 degrees Celsius.

And the temperature is still steadily climbing with no end in sight, so much so that the last five years have been the warmest in recorded history. July 2019 was the warmest month on record, ever. The planet has not been this hot since modern humans started walking on it.

What then happens if we don’t make efforts to curb our emissions? The Earth will survive the shifting climate (as it has before) but humans and most forms of modern life will not be so lucky.

A couple of degrees of change in temperature is not harmful:

Daily weather fluctuates a lot, so a couple of degrees of change in the Earth’s average temperature may not seem like a big deal to most of us. However, when temperatures increase enough to create shifts in annual averages, this has huge implications for life as we know it. And it does not matter how small this shift may seem.

Today, annual temperatures are upwards of 1 degree Celsius above what they used to be before the industrial revolution of the 1900s. However, even such a small degree of change in annual temperatures is already responsible for catastrophic impacts on glaciers, sea levels, biodiversity, agricultural productivity, etc. To understand the importance of these slight increases, one can look at how much emphasis the global policy community has put on containing temperature increases under 2 degrees Celsius.

Some areas of the world will benefit from the changing climate:

As world average temperatures first started climbing, it was predicted that weather would become more pleasant for many parts of the world (mostly the Global North), which would bring about even more economic and social benefits. However, extreme temperatures across the US and Europe this July show that this assumption was rather short-sighted.

Recent research shows that the economy from all parts of the world—whether hot or cold, rich or poor—will shrink if climate change is not addressed in time. Another research shows that increasing temperatures were leading to increasing suicides, even in colder parts of the world where the weather was deemed to be getting ‘more pleasant’. This study also found that working indoors, in a climate-controlled environment, did nothing to reduce such suicidal tendencies. While it is true that some parts of the world are less vulnerable to climate change than others, it would be myopic to say that there are populations that will see a net benefit from this phenomenon.

 The Chinese produce the most greenhouse emissions:

This really depends on how you want to look at it. Sure, China as a whole produces twice the amount of greenhouse gases than the US does. But it also has more than four times as many citizens than the US. This means that the emission footprint of an average Chinese is much smaller than that of an average American with a 2015 study showing that per capita emission is 10 times larger in the US compared to China.

It is true that China can help lower its emissions considerably by switching to renewables. However, after a certain threshold reducing emissions will also mean reducing the quality of life of its citizens—this is where progress will stall. However, countries with high capita emissions, like the US and Australia, can complement mitigation efforts by not only improving their energy infrastructures but also encouraging their citizens to reduce their profligate consumption patterns.

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