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Climate change Q & A: basic facts about common misconceptions

Ben Cubby

This article is part of Climate for Change, a Fairfax Media series on global warming. Full coverage can be found here. Follow our coverage on Facebook.

Common misconceptions about climate change:

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How to talk to a climate sceptic

Ben Cubby discusses the varied responses he received to his work as SMH's Environment Editor covering the hotly-debated topic of climate change.

The world has been cooling since 1998

Temperatures have been going up and down slightly, but the variation is overlaid on a clear upward trend. Since regular temperature records began in 1850, 14 of the past 15 years have been the hottest on record. The last quarterly global data, published by NASA earlier this year, suggests 2015 is on track to be the warmest yet. The rate at which the world is warming is also unprecedented: air samples from bubbles trapped in ancient ice, and cross-checked with other samples, show temperatures are rising faster than at any time since modern humans appeared.

The world is getting warmer but we don't know the real cause

The causes of global warming are not absolutely certain, but the overwhelming majority of researchers, working independently in different parts of the world and using different models, have been coming to the same conclusions for two decades. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has reached the conclusion that it is "extremely likely that human activity has been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century".

Climate change is caused by solar activity

Changes in radiation from the sun affect Earth's climate, as do oscillations in the Earth's orbit. But since the 1970s, when temperatures increasingly rose beyond norms, both the sun's energy output and the Earth's orbit have been stable. In any case, changing patterns of solar activity are included in climate models.

There is no consensus among scientists

There is clear consensus in the world scientific community, and in Australia, that human activity is the main driver of climate change, and that cutting greenhouse gas emissions is the only way of slowing it. This is now the view of all the world's leading national science academies and institutes. This does not constitute a unanimous view, however, with a handful of individual scientists in relevant fields believing it is too early to be sure.

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Why believe long-term predictions when meteorologists cannot even say if it will rain next week?

Climatology takes a step back from day-to-day weather prediction and looks at longer-term patterns. Numerous independent studies have concluded that carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases put into the atmosphere by humans are the new variable causing climate change. Climate models have been repeatedly tested and shown to accurately simulate climate scenarios.

Human emissions are smaller than natural emissions, so cannot be blamed for climate change

Rotting vegetation releases far more greenhouse gases than human activity does, but those emissions are absorbed by a roughly equal amount of growing vegetation, and by the oceans. The new element in this closed system is the extra carbon humans are removing from underground coal, oil and gas reserves and putting into the atmosphere.

Scientists are worried about losing funding, so they toe the government line

There is no evidence that undertaking research on climate change leads to government funding being boosted. In fact some climate-related research positions have been axed in recent federal cuts. In Australia, the funding system is relatively transparent, with public funding for climate-change work being assessed alongside all other research work, and grants generally made based on quality of research, not on conclusions.

Climate sceptics are being silenced

Advocates of this claim are yet to come up with any evidence. Many Australian scientific researchers on climate change have said that the views of "climate sceptics" are given more prominence in the media than their numbers and arguments merit.

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