Category: Online Special

Claim

A Twitter User @wideawake_media on May 3, 2023 wrote about Greenpeace co-founder, Dr Patrick Moore, saying that there is no evidence that CO2 has anything to do with the temperature.

The tweet reads: “Greenpeace[1] [2]  co-founder, Dr. Patrick Moore: “There’s no evidence whatsoever that CO2 is doing anything to the temperature. Absolutely none.”

The tweet also included a 1.53-minute video showing Dr Patric Moore saying at the end that “There is no evidence whatsoever that CO2 is doing anything to the temperature. Absolutely none.” It had 988 retweets, 34 quotes, 1,554 likes and 98 bookmarks.

Verification

What is Carbon Dioxide?

Carbon dioxide (CO2) is a greenhouse gas that originates from the combustion of fossil fuels such as coal, oil, and natural gas and natural phenomena like wildfires, volcanic eruptions, and other natural processes.

What is Temperature?

Temperature is defined as the degree of hotness or coldness of an object or the measure of the amount of heat energy an object possesses. According to Britannica, temperature serves as an indicator of the natural flow of heat energy.

Effect of Carbon Dioxide on Temperature

According to National History Museum, Carbon dioxide causes an effect like the glass in a greenhouse, trapping heat and warming up the inside, and even though it makes up less than 0.1% of the atmosphere, carbon dioxide can have a huge effect on how much heat the planet’s surface retains.

The trapped heat energy increases average global surface air temperatures, ultimately resulting in climate change.

Read Also: FACT CHECK: CO2 has not been coming down steadily for years

NOAA states that carbon dioxide is crucial for maintaining Earth’s natural greenhouse effect, which prevents the average global surface temperature from falling below freezing. However, human activities such as the burning of fossil fuels have intensified this effect by significantly increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide levels. This accelerated greenhouse effect is leading to a rise in global temperatures.

Carbon dioxide absorbs infrared radiation, which controls the Earth’s temperature. As a result, the rise in carbon dioxide concentration has led to an increase in global temperatures.

Although water vapor has a greater impact on the overall greenhouse effect, scientists have discovered that carbon dioxide is the key gas responsible for determining and regulating temperature.

By adding more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, people are supercharging the natural greenhouse effect, causing global temperatures to rise. A research paper published in Nature Climate Change demonstrated that higher atmospheric CO2 concentrations directly increase temperature.

Greenpeace Company on Patrick Moore

Greenpeace has issued several press statements regarding Patrick Moore and his anti-climate change stance including that Moore is not a co-founder of Greenpeace neither was he its spokesman.

The statement which is in the website of Greenpeace read, “Moore frequently portrays himself as a founder or co-founder of Greenpeace, and many news outlets have repeated this characterization. Although Mr. Moore played a significant role in Greenpeace Canada for several years, he did not found Greenpeace. Phil Cote, Irving Stowe, and Jim Bohlen founded Greenpeace in 1970.”

The organization also recognizes that Moore often misrepresents himself in the media as an environmental “expert” or an “environmentalist,” while offering anti-environmental opinions on a wide range of issues and taking a distinctly anti-environmental stance stating that Moore has been a paid spokesman for various polluting companies for more than 30 years.

“He also exploits long-gone ties with Greenpeace to sell himself as a speaker and pro-corporate spokesperson, usually taking positions that Greenpeace opposes.

“Patrick Moore has been a paid spokesman for a variety of polluting industries for more than 30 years, including the timber, mining, chemical and the aquaculture industries. Most of these industries hired Mr. Moore only after becoming the focus of a Greenpeace campaign to improve their environmental performance.”

Rating

False: Global temperatures have been rising due to the increased concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, predominantly carbon dioxide, which traps heat, preventing it from escaping into space.

This fact-check was produced by Justina Asishana, a Journalist with The Nation Newspaper with support from Code for Africa’s PesaCheck and African Fact-Checking Alliance network

Claim

A Twitter user @wideawake_media on May 1 quoted the Greenpeace co-founder, Dr. Patrick Moore, as saying that human carbon emissions are in fact good for the planet.

The tweet also contained an audio cut out of a 1 hour 20 minutes video of a session with Dr Patrick Moore. The tweet had 789 retweets, 36 quotes and 1,206 likes.

The tweet reads: “Greenpeace co-founder, Dr. Patrick Moore, explains why human carbon emissions are in fact good for the planet, not the cause of impending climate apocalypse. We are the salvation of life, not its destroyer.”

The audio transcription reads: “This is a half billion years or more of global temperatures and CO2 concentration in the atmosphere. The blue line is temperature, the purple line is CO2. CO2 has been coming down steadily for 150 million years and if you look at the very tail end, on the right-hand side, that little uptick is all we have done which has ended the constant downward trend in CO2 in a global atmosphere.

“CO2 being the main carbon source for all life, in fact, the only carbon source for all life and it went from 6000 points per million to 180 points per million not that long ago. Here is a graph showing the present level of CO2 which we have created. The death of plants occurs at 150. We came along just in time to reverse the constant downward trend of CO2. In other words, we have restored balance somewhat to the global carbon cycle, we are the salvation of life not the destroyer.”

Verification

Claim 1: CO2 has been coming down steadily for 150 million years

According to the Global Carbon Budget 2022, carbon dioxide concentrations are rising due to the annual emissions from burning fossil fuels, which increased every decade from nearly 11 billion tons of carbon dioxide annually in the 1960s to an estimated 36.6 billion tons in 2022.

Before the Industrial Revolution, CO2 levels were consistently around 280 ppm for almost 6,000 years of human civilization, but this has changed as humans have generated an estimated 1.5 trillion tons of CO2 pollution, much of which will continue to warm the atmosphere for thousands of years.

Human actions have caused a significant increase in the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. In less than 200 years, the level of carbon dioxide has risen by 50%, which is equivalent to a 150% increase compared to its levels in 1750. Currently, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is higher than it has ever been in recorded human history.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) states that human activities annually release more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than natural processes can remove, increasing the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. This has reflected in a 50 per cent increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide than it was before the Industrial Revolution.

Global monthly average concentrations of carbon dioxide have risen from around 339 parts per million in 1980 (averaged over the year) to 415 parts per million in 2021, an increase of more than 20 per cent.

According to the United Nations, greenhouse gas concentrations continue to rise despite being at their highest levels in two million years.

Claim 2: CO2 went from 6000 parts per million to 180 parts per million not too long ago

Continuous observations of carbon dioxide began at Mauna Loa Volcanic Observatory in 1958. At the time, the global atmospheric carbon dioxide was already 315 parts per million (ppm). Parts per million” refers to the number of carbon dioxide molecules per million molecules of dry air.

Paul Olsen, a geologist, and paleontologist at Columbia Climate School’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, in an explanatory article, stated that “although there was no one around to measure the atmosphere’s CO2 concentration millions of years ago, paleoclimatologists have tried to reconstruct past temperature and carbon dioxide levels using ice cores, tree rings, corals, ancient pollen, and sedimentary rocks.”

He hypothesized that extremely high atmospheric CO2 levels of 6,000 ppm were recorded during the Age of Dinosaurs, which was 200 million years ago; this was also corroborated by time scavengers which analysed that about 500 to 400 million years ago in the Ordovician and Silurian, atmospheric CO₂ was really high, somewhere between 2,500 and 6,000 ppmv, and the atmospheric CO₂  has largely stayed between 180 and 280 ppmv for the last 800,000 years. A study showed that CO2 concentration in the atmosphere has never fallen below about 180 ppm for the past 650,000 years.

Claim 3: Humans have restored balance to the global carbon cycle

TheNational Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) defines the carbon cycle as nature’s way of recycling carbon atoms. It further describes the carbon cycle as the “process in which carbon atoms continually travel from the atmosphere to the Earth and then back into the atmosphere”.

EarthHow describes the carbon cycle as photosynthesis, decomposition, respiration and combustion, while Britannica defines the carbon cycle as the circulation of carbon in various forms through nature.

Carbon levels can fluctuate over time as it transfers between different reservoirs. For instance, plants can absorb carbon from the atmosphere through photosynthesis to produce food. This carbon can then be consumed by animals and stored within them, and upon their death, the animals decompose, and their remains transform into sediment, trapping the carbon in layers that eventually solidify into rock or minerals. Certain portions of this sediment have the potential to develop into fossil fuels like coal, oil, or natural gas, which emit carbon into the atmosphere when burned.

Nature keeps carbon levels in balance. This means the amount of carbon released into the environment is naturally absorbed back. This balance is important for maintaining a livable planet, but humans have caused an imbalance by burning fossil fuels, which has led to more carbon being released into the air than the environment can handle thus, human activities have a tremendous impact on the carbon cycle.

In an article on Terrapass in 2021, it was stated that the last 150 years of human activity have caused both a dramatic and rapid change to the balance in the carbon cycle.

Rating

False – The claim that CO2 has been coming down steadily for 150 million years is false, as CO2 has increased over the years, rising to 415 parts per million in 2021, with human activities upsetting the carbon balance.

This fact-check was produced by Justina Asishana, a Journalist with The Nation Newspaper with support from Code for Africa’s PesaCheck and African Fact-Checking Alliance network.

Claim

A Twitter user @TonyClimate on May 6 wrote that there has been no trend in Arctic sea ice extent for 17 years.

The tweet reads: ‘‘There has been no trend in Arctic sea ice extent for seventeen years, which is almost all of @GretaThunberg’s life.  #ClimateScam.”

The tweet attracted 138 retweets, 5 Quote tweets, 401 Likes and 6,958 views.

Verification

What is a trend?

The Britannica Dictionary defines a trend as a “general direction of change” while Cambridge Dictionary states it is a “general development or change in a situation or in the way that people are behaving”.

In relation to Climate, All the Science describes Climate trends as “atmospheric patterns such as temperature, gas concentrations, and precipitation collected to understand historic patterns, compare them to ongoing ones, and predict future weather events”.

Has there been any trend in Arctic sea ice extent for 17 years?

NASA has been monitoring the ice coverage in the Arctic Ocean through satellites and has found that there has been a significant decrease in the ice extent during the summer. In its 2022 report, it was discovered that over the past 16 years, the ice has reached its lowest levels with 2022 being the tenth-lowest recorded since NASA started observing 44 years ago and tying with 2017 and 2018.

The National Snow and Ice Center reports that sea ice extent “decreased 690,000 square kilometers during April 2023, compared to the 1981 to 2010 average April decrease of 1.16 million square kilometers”.

NASA also reported that Arctic sea ice reaches its minimum extent each September, pointing out that “September Arctic sea ice is now shrinking at a rate of 12.6% per decade, compared to its average extent during the period from 1981 to 2010”.

The claim contains a chart similar to that of the Antarctic Sea Ice Extent monthly Time Series for the Southern hemisphere, and not the Arctic Sea ice extend.

Source: OSISAF Ocean and sea ice

The Northern Hemisphere “refers to the half of the planet that is north of the equator, while the Southern Hemisphere is all of the planet south of the equator”.

Apart from being located on opposite sides of the world, the Antarctic sea ice has some differences compared to the Arctic sea ice. The Arctic is mostly surrounded by land, while the Antarctic is a continent encompassed by the ocean, and this uniqueness affects the sea ice in both regions. Furthermore, unlike the Arctic sea ice, which has diminished drastically because of global warming, the Antarctic sea ice has not displayed any significant trend. However, scientists are observing the sharp decline in sea ice extent witnessed since 2016, to establish whether the Antarctic Sea ice extend is developing a significant downward trend.

Sea ice in both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres undergoes a growth phase in fall and winter, followed by a melting phase in spring and summer. This trend is the opposite for the Arctic and Antarctic regions, as they experience contrasting seasons and hence sea ice growth and retreat occur at different times throughout the year.

Rating

False – The Arctic sea ice has declined directly in relation to the warming climate. The Summer Arctic sea ice extent is recorded to be shrinking by 12.6% per decade. The region in 2022 experienced the 10th lowest summer ice. On the other hand, the Antarctica Sea Ice extend has not shown any longterm significant trend.

This fact-check was produced by Justina Asishana, a Journalist with The Nation Newspaper with support from Code for Africa’s PesaCheck and African Fact-Checking Alliance network.

Claim

A Twitter User @_ClimateCraze on May 5, 2023 wrote that greenhouse gases do not trap heat and that climate change is constant.

The tweet reads: “#1.  Greenhouse gases do not trap heat – otherwise earth would have been toast billions of years ago.  #2.  There is no such thing as a balanced climate – as climate CHANGE is constant.  #3.  #ClimateScam is junk science advanced by propaganda..”

The tweet had 78 retweets, 2 Quotes, 196 Likes and 2,861 views.

Verification

What are Greenhouse gases?

According to Britannica, greenhouse gas is “any gas that has the property of absorbing infrared radiation (net heat energy) emitted from Earth’s surface and reradiating it back to Earth’s surface, thus contributing to the greenhouse effect”.

Read Also: FACT CHECK: Available data shows April 2023 was joint fourth warmest April globally

The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) defines greenhouse gases as “gases that trap heat in the atmosphere”. Greenhouse gases include carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxides, and water vapor. Their concentrations are measured in parts per million, parts per billion, and even parts per trillion.

There are two types of greenhouse effects; the natural greenhouse effect and the enhanced greenhouse effect. The natural greenhouse effect is “caused by the natural amounts of greenhouse gases and is vital to life while the enhanced greenhouse effect refers to the additional radiative forcing resulting from increased concentrations of greenhouse gases induced by human activities”.

Greenhouse gases retain heat in the atmosphere because they trap some of the Earth’s outgoing energy. This trapping of heat “causes changes in the radiative balance of the Earth—the balance between energy received from the sun and emitted from Earth—that alter climate and weather patterns at global and regional scales”.

Is Climate Change constant?

Climate change is the “significant variation of average weather conditions becoming, for example, warmer, wetter, or drier—over several decades or longer”.

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Earth’s climate varies considerably over seasons, years, and decades, largely due to natural cycles, as temperature trends across the entire globe are not constant due to the planet’s diverse geography.

The Earth’s climate is changing, and this change is forecast to be witnessed even beyond this century. While weather changes are observable within hours, climate changes over longer periods of time.

The pace at which the global climate is changing far exceeds the natural climate variations that have taken place throughout the history of the Earth. Evidence gathered from various climate variables such as trends in globally averaged temperature, sea level rise, upper-ocean heat content, land-based ice melt, arctic sea ice, and depth of seasonal permafrost thaw, consistently indicate a planet that is experiencing warming. These changes are primarily attributed to human activities, which alter the atmospheric composition either through direct emissions of gases or particles or indirectly through atmospheric chemistry.

Rating

False – Greenhouse gases are gases in the atmosphere that trap heat within the Earth.

This fact-check was produced by Justina Asishana, a Journalist with The Nation Newspaper with support from Code for Africa’s PesaCheck and African Fact-Checking Alliance network.