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.

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Showing 8 myths:

• #35: It's a 1500-year cycle

  Deniers say: Climate goes through natural cycles. The warming we’re seeing now is just part of a 1,500-year cycle.
  Science says: Some natural cycles make it warmer in one part of the world and colder in another. Man-made climate change makes it warmer everywhere.
  From ice core data we can see that on approximately 1,500-year cycles, the northern polar region has warmed while the southern polar region has cooled. This "see-saw" effect redistributes the planet’s heat, but total heat in the global system stays the same. In other words, regional temperatures change, but the average global temperature doesn’t. These regional cycles are unlike what we’re observing now. The global temperature is rising because of carbon pollution from human activities. And there’s nothing natural about that.
• #36: The Little Ice Age just ended

  Deniers say: The last 150 years of warming is just a natural recovery from the last ice age.
  Science says: A planet doesn't "recover" from an ice age like we do from hypothermia. The Earth is warming up, and carbon pollution is to blame.
  The “Little Ice Age,” the most recent cool period in the Earth’s history, may have been triggered by decades of intense volcanic activity. Scientists generally agree that the Little Ice Age ended in the late 19th century. So, could the warming we’re seeing now simply be a “recovery” after the Little Ice Age? No. Although the climate goes through cycles, there isn’t a normal recovery point. In other words, warming after an ice age isn’t like a human naturally recovering from hypothermia. Something has to force the climate to get warmer. In the early part of the 20th century, the Earth warmed because of less volcanic activity and more solar activity. But most of the warming from the mid-20th century onward has been due to carbon pollution from dirty fuels. And now, the planet is warmer than at any point in the last 1,000 years … meaning it’s warmer than well before the start of the Little Ice Age.
• #46: It's cooling

  Deniers say: The temperature trend is going down, especially over the last 15 years.
  Science says: Temperatures go up and down from year to year, but the Earth is warming over the long run.
  Temperature records from around the world clearly show that the Earth has been warming since 1880. Those who argue it's cooling are either confusing cold weather with climate, or are referencing data that measure only short-term changes in global surface temperatures. Natural climate patterns like El Niño or La Niña can make the average global temperature fluctuate from year to year; that's why the lines on a global temperature graph zigzag. It also helps explain why short periods of cooling can occur within longer-term periods of warming. When scientists look at the big picture, though, a clear trend emerges: The world is warming. Temperature records from thermometers aside though, this reality is confirmed by the fact that ice sheets are shrinking, Arctic sea ice is declining, and the oceans are getting warmer.
• #50: We're heading into an ice age

  Deniers say: Ice ages come every 11,500 years. The last ice age was 11,500 years ago. Do the math.
  Science says: Global warming is happening now. An ice age may or may not happen in thousands of years.
  The world is warming because of carbon pollution from fossil fuels like oil and coal. Without those human activities, the world would actually be COOLING slightly. Does that mean we’d be heading into an ice age? Maybe … in the next couple thousand years or so. Ice ages are triggered by natural forces like volcanoes and changes in the Earth’s orbit and tilt. But because the concentration of carbon dioxide is so much higher now than any time in nearly 1 million years, ice sheets are shrinking instead of growing. We need to focus on solving the climate crisis unfolding today, rather than worrying about an ice age thousands of years from now.
• #61: Ice melt isn’t warming the Arctic

  Deniers say: The Earth’s climate has natural feedbacks that keep the planet cool. Otherwise, we’d be seeing runaway warming in the Arctic.
  Science says: The Arctic has been warming twice as fast as the rest of the world.
  In recent decades, the Arctic has been warming at twice the global average rate. Recent research finds that melting sea ice plays a central role in this accelerated warming. How does this work? Sea ice acts like a bright white shield that reflects a portion of the sun’s rays back into space. Deep blue ocean water, however, is less effective in reflecting sunlight. It absorbs a lot more of the sun’s energy, which results in warming. Warming, of course, results in less ice, which in turn results in more warming. It’s a troubling feedback loop.
• #69: Mt. Kilimanjaro's ice loss is due to land use

  Deniers say: Ice melting on Mount Kilimanjaro has local causes. So why should we believe in global climate change?
  Science says: It's not about one glacier or one mountain. Overall, glaciers are losing 150 billion tons of ice a year.
  Mount Kilimanjaro is losing snow and ice. Is this because of global warming? Maybe, but changes in local weather patterns might be more important. Conditions have become drier, meaning less snow is falling to replenish the glaciers and reflect sunlight. Researchers have found that deforestation of the mountain’s foothills is a significant contributor to this drying trend. Still, as one researcher of Kilimanjaro’s deforestation put it: “The fact that the loss of ice on Mt. Kilimanjaro cannot be used as proof of global warming does not mean that the Earth is not warming. There is ample and conclusive evidence that Earth's average temperature has increased in the past 100 years, and the decline of mid- and high-latitude glaciers is a major piece of evidence."
• #91: An ice age was predicted in the 70s

  Deniers say: The same scientists that raise the alarm about global warming were predicting an ice age more than 30 years ago.
  Science says: The climate crisis is happening now. An ice age may or may not happen in thousands of years.
  The scientific evidence is clear: Climate change is happening now and human beings are to blame. In the 1960s and 70s, scientists knew that human activities were changing the Earth’s climate. But which factors would have a bigger effect? Global warming pollution, like carbon dioxide? Or pollution with a cooling effect, like the particles that make up haze? And would human activities override the natural factors that affect our planet’s climate? By the end of the 1970s, most scientists were coming to the conclusion that the world would indeed warm because of carbon pollution. This consensus grew even stronger over time: Today, 97% of climate scientists with Ph.D.s who are actively publishing in their field agree that humans are warming our climate.
• #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.