Climate Science Glossary

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All IPCC definitions taken from Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Working Group I Contribution to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Annex I, Glossary, pp. 941-954. Cambridge University Press.

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The Consensus Project

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About Support

	Climate's changed before
	It's the sun
	It's not bad
	There is no consensus
	It's cooling
	Models are unreliable
	Temp record is unreliable
	Animals and plants can adapt
	It hasn't warmed since 1998
	Antarctica is gaining ice
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Myth Deconstruction - Past (EN)

Reference

Deconstructing climate misinformation to identify reasoning errors
Cook, J., Ellerton, P., & Kinkead, D. (2018). Deconstructing climate misinformation to identify reasoning errors. Environmental Research Letters, 13(2), 024018. Link to PDF & Link to Supplement

Step-by-step deconstruction

The table below is inspired by the simplified supplement and may differ slightly from what is shown in the GIF. This is mostly due to make the text fit into the available space which made it necessary to reword some of it.

1	Identify claim	Climate has changed naturally in the past, so current climate change is natural.
2	Argument structure	Premise 1: Climate has changed natural in the past. Premise 2: The climate is currently changing. Conclusion: Current climate change is naturally caused.
3	Inferential Intent	Deduction
4	Validity	INVALID Conclusion doesn't follow from premise - just because nature caused climate change in the past doesn't mean it has to be causing it now.
4a	Hidden premises	Premise 1: Climate has changed natural in the past. Premise 2: The climate is currently changing. Premise 3: Past drivers of climate change must be the same as current drivers. Conclusion: Current climate change is naturally caused.
5	Check premises	Premise 1 is true. Premise 2 is true. Premise 3 is false: single cause. Assumes that only one factor drives climate change.
6	Status of claim	FALSE The argument is made valid with an extra premise but the premise is false.
7	Summary of fallacies	Single cause: Assumes only natural processes cause climate change. Just because nature drove climate change in the past doesn't mean it must always be the driver. We are confident that human activity is driving current climate change because human fingerprints are observed all over our climate system.