On February 14, 2023 we announced our Rebuttal Update Project. This included an ask for feedback about the added “At a glance” section in the updated basic rebuttal versions. This weekly blog post series highlights this new section of one of the updated basic rebuttal versions and serves as a “bump” for our ask. This week features “Does CO2 always correlate with temperature (and if not, why not)?“. More will follow in the upcoming weeks. Please follow the Further Reading link at the bottom to read the full rebuttal and to join the discussion in the comment thread there.
At a glance
If you happen to be reading something about climate change in the popular media, be sure to keep an eye out for certain words. The one in this case is ‘deceitful’. Why? Because it’s an emotive word. It’s a good sign that the writer is not a scientist but someone with a political axe to grind.
The heat-trapping properties of carbon dioxide, water vapour and other greenhouse gases were identified over 160 years ago. After that, climate research continued unhindered for many decades. However, by the second half of the 20th century the seriousness of the threat of climate change was well-understood. That led in due course to the involvement of bodies such as the United Nations. Treaties such as the Kyoto Protocol of 1997 followed.
In response, the fossil fuels sector and their political and media associates, perceiving threats to profitability, turned climate science into a political football. With climate science thus politicised, the arena within which research and outreach were conducted had changed. This was no longer a quiet backwater.
That’s the historical context. Now we can get to the meat of the myth. The quote above this piece dates from September 2009. Apart from anything else, it’s 14 years out of date now. Globally, the ten warmest years since 1880 have all occurred since the statement was made. According to NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, the average global temperature has increased by 1.4° Celsius (2.5° Fahrenheit) since 1880.
However, global temperature does not correlate exactly with CO2 emissions on a year in, year out basis.There are other well-understood factors that can warm or cool the climate over such short-term periods. You may have heard of El Nino and La Nina. These phenomena involve above- or below-average sea surface temperatures respectively, in the central and eastern Pacific Ocean. Their effects are global.
A strong El Nino can produce a massive global temperature-spike. Such very warm years once led to people making the claim of, “no warming since 1998”. Briefly sounding plausible for a few years, it soon became self-evidently incorrect.
Instead, the correct way to look at temperature trends is to examine them over multiple decades – 30 years is standard in climate science. So to answer the question, “where are we now?”, one would look at the temperature record from 1992-2022. Doing so takes out the noise, the ups and downs due to El Nino, La Nina and other factors. And the trend is most certainly upwards.
To the newcomer to climate science, it can be difficult to spot misinformation. However, opinion-pieces that accuse bodies such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) of intentions like deceit should instantly ring alarm-bells.
It is important to point out that the motive for such political misinformation is to spread confusion and doubt. The organisations behind it simply seek delaying any meaningful action. In kicking the can down the road, they try to deflect the pressure to get their own houses in order, and to hell with the consequences.
Please use this form to provide feedback about this new “At a glance” section. Read a more technical version below or dig deeper via the tabs above!
Click for Further details
In case you’d like to explore more of our recently updated rebuttals, here are the links to all of them:
Myths with link to rebuttal
Short URLs
Ice age predicted in the 1970s
sks.to/1970s
It hasn’t warmed since 1998
sks.to/1998
Antarctica is gaining ice
sks.to/antarctica
CRU emails suggest conspiracy
sks.to/climategate
What evidence is there for the hockey stick
sks.to/hockey
CO2 lags temperature
sks.to/lag
Climate’s changed before
sks.to/past
It’s the sun
sks.to/sun
Temperature records are unreliable
sks.to/temp
The greenhouse effect and the 2nd law of thermodynamics
sks.to/thermo
We’re heading into an ice age
sks.to/iceage
Positives and negatives of global warming
sks.to/impacts
The 97% consensus on global warming
sks.to/consensus
Global cooling – Is global warming still happening?
sks.to/cooling
How reliable are climate models?
sks.to/model
Can animals and plants adapt to global warming?
sks.to/species
What’s the link between cosmic rays and climate change?
sks.to/cosmic
Is Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth accurate?
sks.to/gore
Are glaciers growing or retreating?
sks.to/glacier
Ocean acidification: global warming’s evil twin
sks.to/acid
The human fingerprint in global warming
sks.to/agw
Empirical evidence that humans are causing global warming
sks.to/evidence
How do we know more CO2 is causing warming?
sks.to/greenhouse
Explaining how the water vapor greenhouse effect works
sks.to/vapor
Is extreme weather caused by global warming?
sks.to/extreme
How substances in trace amounts can cause large effects
sks.to/trace
How much is sea level rising?
sks.to/sealevel
Is CO2 a pollutant?
sks.to/pollutant
Does cold weather disprove global warming?
sks.to/cold
Do volcanoes emit more CO2 than humans?
sks.to/volcano
How do human CO2 emissions compare to natural CO2 emissions?
sks.to/co2
Climate scientists could make more money in other careers
sks.to/money
How reliable are CO2 measurements?
sks.to/co2data
Do high levels of CO2 in the past contradict the warming effect of CO2?
sks.to/pastco2
What is the net feedback of clouds?
sks.to/cloud
Global warming vs climate change
sks.to/name
Is Mars warming?
sks.to/mars
How the IPCC is more likely to underestimate the climate response
sks.to/underestimat
How sensitive is our climate?
sks.to/sensitivity
Evidence for global warming
sks.to/warming
Has the greenhouse effect been falsified?
sks.to/falsify
Does breathing contribute to CO2 buildup in the atmosphere?
sks.to/breath
What is causing the increase in atmospheric CO2?
sks.to/CO2increase
What is methane’s contribution to global warming?
sks.to/methane
Plants cannot live on CO2 alone
sks.to/plant
Is the CO2 effect saturated?
sks.to/saturate
Greenhouse warming 100 times greater than waste heat
sks.to/waste
How will global warming affect polar bears?
sks.to/bear
The runaway greenhouse effect on Venus
sks.to/venus
What climate change is happening to other planets in the solar system?
sks.to/planets
Has Arctic sea ice returned to normal?
sks.to/arctic
Was Greenland really green in the past?
sks.to/green
Is Greenland gaining or losing ice?
sks.to/greenland
Human activity is driving retreat of Arctic sea ice
sks.to/arcticcycle
The albedo effect and global warming
sks.to/albedo
Does CO2 always correlate with temperature?
sks.to/correlate
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