Busting Climate Change Myths / How Climate Change Actually Works | GEO GIRL

I have been seeing the same comments/questions over and over again on my modern climate related videos, so I decided to make this video to answer and/or clarify the most common climate change questions and misconceptions that I have been seeing! I hope this helps clear things up for you guys, enjoy! ;)

0:00 Reason for video
1:00 #1 “Climate is always changing”
3:45 Importance of life ‘types’
6:41 #2 “We are in an ice age”
8:04 Rate vs magnitude of change
10:02 Does more CO2 = more trees?
12:24 #3 “Warming increases CO2 levels” (not the other way around)
15:49 #4 “Atmospheric CO2 is not increasing”
17:19 Harm of CO2 going into oceans & algae
18:30 #5 We need to “Save Earth”

Hey there, Earth enthusiast! Check my favorite Earth-friendly products:

(Just click link, press get started, take the free C footprint quiz, then choose how much you want to reduce your footprint by donating to the C sequestration projects they're funding!)

Non-textbook books I recommend:

Tools I use as a geologist/teacher/student:

Disclaimer: Links included in this description might be affiliate links. If you purchase a product or service with the links that I provide I may receive a small commission, but there is no additional charge to you! Thank you for supporting my channel so I can continue to provide you with free content each week! And as always, let me know your topic suggestions in the comments down below!

[donaldbrizzolara]

Rachel: Wonderful presentation. Thank you so very much for all the time and effort you put into your videos. Through you I feel like at last I’m getting current with a new geology that supersedes some of my antiquated thought processes and ideologies.

[aff]

18:30 this section just made me realize why i can't STAND the trope of "earth is destroyed/uninhabitable and unfixable" in scifi, and why I love Wall-E so much. The lost cause fallacy assumes that we'll somehow be fine without Earth and treats it as disposable, and frankly encourages a lot of this ideaology to not care about (or at least not really acknowledge) climate change because 'we'll just move to mars' in scifi fan circles. I'll be borrowing that.

[treelight]

It is kind of scary, that when you want to give an example about 'not understanding' climate science, whether intentional ignorance is involved or not, you can rarely think about something other than the mentioned debates in congress and senate. They freak me out.

[rjsonheim]

Amazing video!!! I’m always trying to explain this to people there is such a massive misunderstanding or a lack of understanding in the public when it comes to climate change you the goat for spreading the knowledge

[rebdomine]

Thanks for the video, even if it will attract unwanted attention from climate deniers. Your misconceptions/misperceptions series are my favourites.

[toastyburger]

If we can't keep Earth livable for humans, how can we expect to terraform another planet?

[toastyburger]

Your carbon sequestration video is excellent. Explaining how we are releasing carbon from the lithosphere and into the atmosphere, hydrosphere, and biosphere was an eye-opener. Getting the carbon back into the lithosphere takes either millions of years or lots of energy. It makes me realize how urgently we need to stop taking carbon from the lithosphere.

[elzabets]

I very much appreciate your content in general, but this recent series has been absolutely delightful in clarifying so many concepts that I knew existed, but never had so tidily explained. One thing that might be helpful for communicating to the general public is mentioning now and then that when you're talking about "positive" and "negative" cycles and loops, that you don't mean "positive" as in good and "negative" as in bad, they're about increase and decrease, et c.

[billyjones]

I'm glad that you emphasized in #1 that the rate of temperature change is important. I've heard people bring up the previous temperature maximus and say things were fine for life then. What they don't think about is how many 10s to 100s of thousands of years it took for the temperature to rise, compared to the centuries at our current rate. Life can adapt to almost anything as long as the rate of change is show enough for evolution.

[toastyburger]

Great video. The misconception I see most often is this: "The CO2 we emit is being taken up by plants, causing the earth to green." While it's true the earth has increased its green leaf area by 5% over the past two decades, it's mostly due to farming in India and China. How effectively does agriculture sequester carbon? And is it true plants release more CO2 as temperatures increase?

[_andrewvia]

Thanks Dr Phillips for wading into this conversation with much-needed facts.

[neotericrecreant]

Another lovely video! So many lovely rocks on the shelves as well!

[LesLess]

Thanks for continuing to cover this hugely important topic!

[shadeen]

Great explanation dr geo girl thank you

[johnfitzgerald]

I particularly liked the graphics showing competing feedback loops at work, maintaining a balance between them. These feedbacks work both ways, driving away from equilibrium.
The climate system has been cycling between two balance points, like many chaotic systems do. So what are the driving forces that are maintaining those equilibrium points?

[cdineaglecollapsecenter]

Great video! It's astonishing to me that people can't grasp that we are just as subject to extinction as other species, and that extinction is probably not a desirable outcome. Loved your point that if the dinosaurs could have (understood and) stopped the asteroid, they would have.

[modalmixture]

Question about the Pleistocene temperature chart at 8:11 - it looks like warming often happens more rapidly than cooling. Is there a reason for this?

[michaeleisenberg]

Rachel 🌅, Thank you for compiling 📑 this information.

[pleskbruce]

As with many other global warming alarmists, this video starts with the conclusion as its premisis - that climate change is a given and that it's a huge problem and it might not wipe out all of humanity - but maybe - but it's not all that serious - but it is.

The biggest clue that this belief is at best questionable is the fact that opinions on it differ along lines of political opinion. We don't see political parties siding with whether or not cigarettes cause cancer (and we didn't in the 60's) or whether seat belts save lives (I've studied weather and climate since seat belts were optional). Why is global warming, ER...uh .. climate change different?

You should do a video that reemphasizes the fact that a climate that changes too quickly for a population will cause major problems - and then explain how taking away fossil fuels quickly and forcing everyone into EVs they can't afford before the kinks have been worked out is perfectly fine. Try terraforming those ideas...

[cjimmersive]

It’s a lot cheaper to come up with reasons not to worry about the effects of our unprecedented industrialization of the planet; I suspect that’s where these misperceptions are coming from. If they were true, that would be great!