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CLAIM
Rising temperature is the cause behind the increased atmospheric CO2.
FACT
Increasing CO2 is causing a rise in global temperature and not vice-versa.
Claim post:
WHAT DOES THE POST CLAIM
A Twitter post that has gone viral with the ‘#Climatescam’ claims that rising global temperature is the cause behind increased atmospheric CO2. It also claims that the temperature of the Earth is regulated by the Sun. The post which has been viewed 115.8 thousand times further claims ‘climate has always changed and will continue to change but global bodies like the UN and WEF want us to believe humans are causing it so that they can exert absolute control over the entire planet’.
WHAT WE FOUND
The claim made by the post that rising temperatures are causing a rise in CO2 is false. The fact is the other way around. It is scientifically evident that rising CO2 is causing a rise in temperature. The Earth’s climate can significantly change depending on the amount of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses present naturally. CO2 concentrations are at their highest point in at least 3 million years now.
Carbon Dioxide’s contribution to global warming
Carbon dioxide (CO2) is a key greenhouse gas that is produced during the exploration, extraction, and burning of fossil fuels like coal, oil, and natural gas as well as during wildfires and other naturally occurring events like volcanic eruptions. Climate change has been brought on by the planet’s atmosphere becoming too heated from carbon dioxide. In fewer than 200 years, human activity has increased the atmosphere’s carbon dioxide content by 50%.
Scientific studies have found that, due to burning fossil fuels, atmospheric CO2 increased from 280 to 300 parts per million in 1880 to 335 to 340 ppm in 1980. Between the middle of the 1960s and 1980, the global temperature increased by 0.2°C, resulting in a warming of 0.4°C over the previous century. Due to measured increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide, this temperature increase is consistent with the projected greenhouse effect.
According to a report by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), carbon dioxide, primarily from fossil fuel-related emissions, has been responsible for 80% of global warming since 1990. Radiative forcing, which affects our climate by warming it, increased by more than 25% between 1990 and 2012 due to increasing carbon dioxide levels.
How does carbon dioxide trap heat?
When sunlight hits the surface of the Earth, some of the light’s energy is absorbed and then re-radiated as infrared waves, which humans experience as heat. These infrared rays ascend into the atmosphere and, if unhindered, will re-enter space. The atmosphere’s infrared wavelengths are not affected by oxygen and nitrogen, this is because molecules are fussy about the spectrum of wavelengths that they interact with.
For instance, while infrared radiation travels at wider and slower wavelengths of 700 to 1,000,000 nanometers, oxygen, and nitrogen absorb energy with closely packed wavelengths of roughly 200 nanometers or less. Because certain wavelength ranges don’t overlap, oxygen and nitrogen act as if infrared waves don’t even exist, allowing heat and waves to travel freely through the atmosphere.
But It’s different for greenhouse gasses like CO2 and others. Infrared energy falls within the range of wavelengths that carbon dioxide, for instance, absorbs, which is between 2,000 and 15,000 nanometers. This infrared energy is absorbed by CO2, which vibrates and re-emits it in all directions. That energy is split roughly in half, with half of it traveling into space and the other half returning as heat to the planet, which adds to the “Greenhouse effect.”
Why don’t the plants, water, and soil simply absorb the excess CO2?
Natural carbon sinks include soil, plants, and the oceans; they take some carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and store it below the surface, in the water, or in tree roots and trunks. The enormous amounts of carbon contained in coal, oil, and natural gas resources would have stayed underground and largely apart from the rest of the carbon cycle without human activity. However, by burning these fossil fuels, people are significantly increasing the amount of carbon in the atmosphere and ocean, and the carbon sinks can’t keep up with our trash quickly enough.
The rate of climate change has been unprecedented over the last millennia
The climate of the Earth has altered over time. There have been eight cycles of ice ages and warmer periods in the previous 800,000 years, with the end of the last ice age about 11,700 years ago marking the beginning of the contemporary climate era — and of human civilization. The majority of these climate shifts are linked to extremely slight differences in Earth’s orbit that alter the quantity of solar energy received by our planet.
The current warming trend is distinct in that it is certainly the product of human activity since the mid-1800s, and it is accelerating at a rate not seen in many millennia. Human activities have undeniably produced the atmospheric gasses that have trapped more of the Sun’s energy in the Earth system.
Our atmosphere and oceans are currently flooded with CO2, and we can see that the carbon sinks cannot keep up with the rate at which these concentrations are increasing.
Currently, there is 420 ppm (parts per million) of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere, and that number is steadily increasing. Since the start of the Industrial Age, when the concentration was close to 280 ppm, this has increased by 47 percent, and since 2000, when it was close to 370 ppm, it has increased by 11 percent. And although they still make up only 0.04 percent of the atmosphere, this equates to billions of tonnes of heat-trapping gas. For more on this, refer to the CFC article here.
References:
- https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/carbon-dioxide/
- http://climate-dynamics.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/hansen81a.pdf
- https://www.airclim.org/acidnews/carbon-dioxide-causes-80-global-warming
- https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2915/the-atmosphere-getting-a-handle-on-carbon-dioxide/
- https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2021/02/25/carbon-dioxide-cause-global-warming/
- http://climate.nasa.gov/blog/2949/why-milankovitch-orbital-cycles-cant-explain-earths-current-warming/
- https://climate.nasa.gov/climate_resources/24/graphic-the-relentless-rise-of-carbon-dioxide/
- https://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/tag/decarbonization/
- https://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2018/11/27/carbon-dioxide-removal-climate-change/
- https://climatefactchecks.org/post-falsely-claims-co2-being-a-trace-gas-cannot-cause-global-warming/
- Image source: https://www.google.com/amp/s/climate.nasa.gov/evidence.amp
