26 Common Climate Myths Debunked

holy_calamity writes to mention that New Scientist is revealing the truth behind the '26 most common climate myths' used to muddy the waters in this ongoing heated debate. "Our planet's climate is anything but simple. All kinds of factors influence it, from massive events on the Sun to the growth of microscopic creatures in the oceans, and there are subtle interactions between many of these factors. Yet despite all the complexities, a firm and ever-growing body of evidence points to a clear picture: the world is warming, this warming is due to human activity increasing levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, and if emissions continue unabated the warming will too, with increasingly serious consequences."

Comments

Troubling lack of snow

[Scrameustache]

Eastern Canada is currently experiencing its thickest strongest ice in 30 years. Coast Guard officials I've spoken with say the ice severity follows a 30 year cycle and current conditions are the same as in the 1970s. The former capital of Canada, Québec city, experienced its first non-white xmas, ever, in 2006.

Re:FUD

[Rei]

Quite to the contrary of the GP's assertion, climate has caused catastrophically large extinction events in the past. Thankfully, climate doesn't swing wildly very often on it's own.

Also, notice that it's not, say, a high temperature or high CO2 levels that are bad. It's the *rapid change* that is bad, and as far as rate of change, this current one is only really bested by asteroid/comet impacts and supervolcanism. A disturbing example of this is the "Great Dying" (the Permian-Triassic event), largely brought about by Earth's largest known volcanic event (the eruption of the "Siberian Traps"), which doubled Earth's CO2 levels, created acid rain, and all sorts of other effects that mimic Man's impact on the modern world (the other major theory also involves global warming, but from methane unleashed by the traps instead of CO2; either way, the warming aspect is generally uncontested, as the evidence is so strong). Over a million or so years (most concentrated in a few hundred thousand), the vast majority of multicellular life died as ecosystems were thrown out of balance, and hundreds of millions of years of evolution were undone. For a while after this eruption, the dominant species on the planet were fungi -- decomposers. Slowly eating all of the dead.

Re:Vote with your money

[Anonymous Coward]

Good one. It's funny to listen to a hundred scientists argue about this issue with so much more certainty and passion than scientists like me have. I'm not going to touch the issue, other than to lament the way that it has become politicized to the extent that random people buy ridiculous individual arguments and defend a position that has no scientific support.

What I really wanted to point out, though, was that "organic" products are actually a major problem to the "let's emit less CO2 and remove more" strategy. "Organic" crops take up more that twice as much land area per unit output, which has led to huge sections of rainforest cleared out to allow for more land-hungry organic food production. Organic food was never meant to be a pro-environmental movement. When the labeling was first conceived, the idea was to imply that the food was healthier because it contained bugs instead of poisons. The idea that pesticides would then be less prevalent in water supplies became tied to it, with good reason. But then from that pro-environmental argument, people got the idea that organic food must be good for the environment in every way. It's certainly not. Organic food is an important cause of deforestation in Central America, both directly (organic food grown there) and indirectly (increased organic production in the United States means lower overall agricultural output, which then increases the demand for agriculture in Central America). Organic food in some cases may be better for your health. In some ways, it's better for the environment. However, it's a big problem for the environment in other ways, so you'll have to make an educated choice.

Okay, one more thing. "Does 1 person make a real difference? Hell no" is one of the stupidest things I've ever seen posted on /.

Re:I wish there was another point...

[duranaki]

Just a side note... CO2 isn't dirty, and is typically named public enemy #1 of "greenhouse gases". If all our cars and combustion based power planets burned friendly carbs at 100% efficiency they'd still spit out lots of H2O and CO2. We'd have no smog, you'd breathe freely even on hot days, and the world would still get warmer (or at least the majority of scientist would predict it).

I'm not trying to agitate, just hear this "CO2 is pollution" argument too often. But whatever shuts your neighbor up... :)