CLAIM: A Twitter user, Janebond on April 2 posted a claim on the microblogging site that carbon emissions are not the cause of rising temperatures, but another scam to control people further.
The claim was supported by a bar chart of purported continuous measurement of temperature using a thermometer from Central England.
“Carbon emissions are not the cause of rising temperatures, another scam to control you all further when the fuck are you going to learn..,” the post was simply put.
Carbon emissions are not the cause of rising temperatures, another scam to control you all further when the fuck are you going to learn.. pic.twitter.com/uld1Stq06K
— Janebond (@Janebon34813396) April 2, 2023
As of May 15, the tweet has been viewed by about 1,500 tweeps, retweeted 31 times and liked by 54.
VERIFICATION: Scientific evidence agrees that burning of fossil fuels, cutting down of forests and livestock farming are increasingly influencing the climate and the earth’s temperature. Consequently, the action adds enormous amounts of greenhouse gases to those naturally occurring in the atmosphere, thereby increasing the greenhouse effect and global warming. Gases that trap heat in the atmosphere are called greenhouse gases and carbon dioxide (CO2) is the primary greenhouse gas emitted through human activities.
For instance 2011-2020 was the warmest decade recorded, with global average temperature reaching 1.1°C above pre-industrial levels. Human-induced global warming is presently increasing at a rate of 0.2°C per decade.
An increase of 2°C compared to the temperature in pre-industrial times is associated with serious negative impacts on the natural environment and human health and wellbeing, including a much higher risk that dangerous and possibly catastrophic changes in the global environment will occur.
For this reason, the Paris Agreement in seeking to strengthen the global response to climate change, reaffirms the goal of limiting global temperature increase to well below 2 degrees Celsius, while pursuing efforts to limit the increase to 1.5 degrees.
The Centre for Climate and Energy Solutions reports that the Earth’s average surface temperature has increased by about 1.8°F (1.0°C) since the late 1800; and human-caused greenhouse gas emissions known as CO2 are responsible for the observed warming.
A warmer Earth, according to the centre, experiences more extreme weather events, like longer fire seasons, bigger and more frequent floods, and slower and stronger hurricanes.
The European Union corroborates that CO2 produced by human activities is the largest contributor to global warming, a term that is synonymous with rising temperatures. By 2020, CO2 concentration in the atmosphere had risen to 48% above its pre-industrial level (before 1750).
Meanwhile, there are natural causes, such as changes in solar radiation or volcanic activity, but are estimated to have contributed less than plus or minus 0.1°C to total warming between 1890 and 2010.
Other greenhouse gases, which are emitted by human activities are in smaller quantities. For example, methane is a more powerful greenhouse gas than CO2, but has a shorter atmospheric lifetime. Nitrous oxide, like CO2, is a long-lived greenhouse gas that accumulates in the atmosphere over decades to centuries, but it is emitted in small quantities.
NASA, an acclaimed climate-literate society working together to build a more sustainable future, said human activities have raised the atmosphere’s carbon dioxide content by 50 per cent in less than 200 years; and the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere warms the planet, causing climate change.
CONCLUSION: The claim that carbon emissions are not the cause of rising temperatures is FALSE. The model is erroneous because quite simply carbon emissions are not the ‘only’ cause of global heating, but they contribute largely to the rising global temperatures.
This fact-check was produced by BONews Service with support from Code for Africa’s PesaCheck, International Fact-Checking Network, and African Fact Checking Alliance network.