Man-made climate change is here.

Climate change is a reality we can no longer ignore. We see the impacts in our everyday lives, from extreme superstorms, to heat waves, to massive wildfires and droughts. But climate denial, bankrolled by Dirty Energy companies and justified by pseudoscience, persists.

Reality Drop, inspired by Skeptical Science, is a library of science-based rebuttals to climate change deniers.

Search for climate denier myths:

Filter your results:

Showing 2 myths:

• #107: Natural gas is a bridge fuel

  Deniers say: Natural gas is a ‘bridge fuel’ with relatively low carbon emissions.
  Science says: Natural gas is a bridge to nowhere. It undermines progress on clean energy and is dangerous for our climate.
  Natural gas is a dirty fossil fuel. Like coal and oil, it produces carbon pollution that disrupts our climate and greatly increases our risk of costly disasters. Nonetheless, natural gas is often touted as a temporary “bridge fuel” that will help us move away from coal and toward renewable energy like wind and solar. But here’s the thing: We don’t have to wait. The longer we delay our transition to truly clean energy, the worse off we’ll be. Natural gas is mostly made of methane, which is a greenhouse gas over 20 times more powerful than carbon dioxide. If methane leaks from natural gas extraction and distribution prove to be as high as initial studies indicate, natural gas could even be worse for our climate than coal. Moreover, the International Energy Agency found that a large natural gas boom, even with practices to reduce methane leakage, would still put us on track for an unsustainable global temperature rise of 3.5 degrees Celsius. The good news? We have viable alternatives. In 2012, the top new electricity source in the U.S. was wind power — not natural gas. To reduce carbon pollution, we need to ramp up our clean energy use without any further delay — and not get sidetracked by dirty energy like natural gas.
• #109: President Obama’s Climate Action Plan is bad for the economy

  Deniers say: The Climate Action Plan will kill jobs and hurt the economy.
  Science says: The Climate Action Plan will save lives by reducing carbon pollution while creating good jobs and providing billions of dollars in annual savings to the U.S. It’s a win-win-win scenario.
  Implementing the President’s Climate Action Plan will reduce pollution and provide significant economic benefits to the U.S. From 2011 to 2012, the U.S. experienced 25 weather and climate disasters with damages totaling over $1 billion each, affecting the lives and livelihoods of many working families. Many such events are expected to become more frequent and intense with climate change. President Obama recognizes the social and economic threat that climate change poses, and his Climate Action Plan (CAP) is a vital step toward addressing it, transitioning the U.S. to a cleaner, more sustainable economy and away from the dirty fossil fuels that pollute our air and are the biggest contributors to climate change. His plan targets four areas where the U.S. can achieve significant reductions in emissions: new and existing power plants, energy efficiency, hydrofluorocarbons, and methane. Targeting these four areas will reduce dangerous carbon pollution and help curb climate change. And, the best part of this plan is that it will provide tremendous economic benefits. For example, a dollar invested in clean energy creates three times as many jobs as would be created by the fossil fuel industry, and workers in the clean economy earn better wages than the median American wage. This plan will create good jobs, save lives, and provide billions of dollars in annual savings to the U.S.