CLAIM: A verified Twitter account user, Emmy has made a claim on the microblogging site that climate change is the biggest hoax ever perpetrated by governments worldwide.
Emmy urged whoever believes in her claim to retweet the post.
“Climate change is the biggest hoax ever perpetrated by governments worldwide. Retweet if you agree,” the tweet was simply put.
The post appeared alongside a photo montage, mocking the climate change activists.
The claim was made on May 22 and has been viewed by almost 63,000 other Twitter users, retweeted close to 3000 times and liked by 5,412 tweeps as of June 1.
Climate change is the biggest hoax ever perpetrated by governments worldwide.
Retweet if you agree. pic.twitter.com/WwSW6lO3bf
— •Ɛɱɱყ• (@brixwe) May 22, 2023
VERIFICATION: Climate change has been a subject of hot debate between climate activists and climate deniers. According to the World Bank, climate change is defined as the significant variation of average weather conditions, becoming, for example, warmer, wetter, or drier —over several decades or longer. It is the longer-term trend that differentiates climate change from natural weather variability.
NASA said it is a long-term change in the average weather patterns that have come to define Earth’s local, regional and global climates. These changes have a broad range of observed effects that are synonymous with the term.
These variations in the temperatures over time are changing weather patterns and disrupting the usual balance of nature, thereby posing many risks to human beings and all other forms of life on Earth.
But climate simply means the long-term pattern of weather in a particular area or the average weather conditions of a particular place over a 30 year period.
All places on earth accordingly have their own climates, and that some climates are small in scale, like the climate of a local region or the microclimates within an ecosystem, while some are much larger, such as the climates of entire continents, or the world’s oceans.
Different from weather events, which are short-term and temporary phenomena, climates are usually steady and predictable and shape how organisms and human civilisations evolve and adapt in any given region.
To establish the changes in climate, the British Geological Survey explained how geographical records show a number of large variations in the Earth’s climate, caused by many natural factors, including changes in the sun, emissions from volcanoes, variations in Earth’s orbit, but these changes have typically occurred very slowly, over thousands or millions of years.
Recent studies indicate, however, that the current climate is changing more rapidly than shown in geological records, the rapidity which the Carbon Brief observed, only began in the later part of the 19th century due to human activity, particularly when human society began to industrialise.
The studies, Carbon Brief said, suggest that the climate system responds to greenhouse gases quicker than thought, and the main greenhouse gases whose concentrations are rising according to the World Meteorological Organisation, are carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs), hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) and ozone in the lower atmosphere.
The Eurostat Statistics Explained also describes carbon dioxide emissions as emissions stemming from the burning of fossil fuels and the manufacture of cement, which include carbon dioxide produced during consumption of solid, liquid, and gas fuels as well as gas flaring.
On its part, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) argues that if the greenhouse gas emissions from the burning of fossil fuels is not reduced, the effect will continue to be a consistent rising in global temperature, the consequences, which include massive crop and fishery collapse, the disappearance of hundreds of thousands of species, and entire communities becoming uninhabitable.
“While these outcomes may still be avoidable, climate change is already causing suffering and death.”
“From raging wildfires and supercharged storms, its compounding effects can be felt today, outside our own windows, ” said the NRDC.
Similarly, the UN submitted that fossil fuels – coal, oil and gas – are by far the largest contributor to global climate change, accounting for over 75 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions and nearly 90 per cent of all carbon dioxide emissions.
As greenhouse gas emissions blanket the Earth, the UN said, they trap the sun’s heat, leading to global warming and climate change.
“The world is now warming faster than at any point in recorded history.
“Warmer temperatures over time are changing weather patterns and disrupting the usual balance of nature.
“This poses many risks to human beings and all other forms of life on Earth,” said the global intergovernmental organisation.
CONCLUSION: The claim that climate change is the biggest hoax ever perpetrated by governments worldwide is misleading and outright FALSE. There are overwhelming studies that have shown that the continuous rising in global temperature is a proof of climate change and mainly caused by human activity due to greenhouse gas emissions, arising from carbon dioxide emissions and fossil fuels burning.
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.