Photo Courtesy Of NASA

With so much at stake, corporate interests, bias media, revolving door politicians, and those who follow them are flooding the airwaves with false truths, and flat out propaganda to mislead and confuse the average person. And with almost unlimited funding via large corporate donors, they have made a relentless push to stop environmental action in its tracks. Here are a list of the the most common propaganda talking points they are throwing around these days, and the real truths you can use to counter them.

1. ‘Volcanoes release more Co2 than humans do each year’

This is one of the lamest and easiest to disprove pieces of propaganda that climate change deniers have been using to downplay man’s part in global Co2 emissions. According to the USGS, volcanoes, both above and below the sea release a total of 200 million tonnes of CO2 on average per year. And while that may sound like a huge amount, The U.S. Department of Energy estimates that in 2003, the man made global emissions of Co2 were at 26.8 billion tonnes. That’s right, we spew out over one hundred times as much Co2 per year as all the worlds volcanoes combined. If you want to really blow a deniers mind, after they say that its Volcanoes to blame, make them confirm that they believe volcanoes are able to alter global climate. When they agree that they believe in that, inform them of that fact that they represent less than 1% of man made Co2. Then ask them if they still believe that humans can’t be responsible for global warming if they produce 100 times as much carbon dioxide as the volcanoes.

2. ‘They call it pollution. We call it life’

This talking point about Co2 was used in a series of commercials and op-eds funded by the Competitive Enterprise Institute in 2006 and has become a favorite of climate change deniers ever since. While the CEI may be right in that without Co2, life on our planet would cease to exist. They leave out the fact that carbon dioxide is only good for life at certain levels. Once it goes above a certain ppm, it becomes toxic. If our current level of atmospheric carbon dioxide was increased by 100%, it would result in a constant feeling of drowsiness in those who breathed it. Doubling that again, would result in a narcotic effect on those exposed. And at a concentration of 5-8% it starts to create difficulty breathing, headaches, vision and hearing problems, loss of consciousness, and even death.

3. ‘Scientists predicted global cooling in the 70′s, why should we trust them now?’

The myth that just won’t die. For years now those with their heads buried in the sand have been using this one to try and discredit the current scientific consensus. And much like all the other propaganda, this one holds no water when you look at it closely. While it is true that during the 1970′s there was some talk of global cooling, but it was by no means a consensus. In fact all of it came from a very small number of scientists speculating about possible cooling. They never gave a cause, they never did any major studies, and there was never more than a few dozen reputable scientists who gave it a second thought. The reason this small speculative rumor gained so much attention back then, and still does today is that the media latched onto it like it was the 1970′s version of Y2K.

4. ‘There was record cold temps in _______ this week/year’

The drudge report loves using this one on an almost weekly basis to rile up their followers. Anytime it snows early, or a new record low temperature is recorded, the global warming deniers latch onto it and milk it for all it is worth. Little do they know how uneducated and ignorant they make themselves look to those with even a rudimentary understanding of how weather and global climate differ. And that is the truth of this situation. localized single event weather instances have no relation to long term global temperatures. If they did, Seattle wouldn’t of broken it’s records for both high and low temps over the last twelve months. On the flip side, this also means that a record high temp for one city, state or country also does not equate to proof of global warming either. Frankly, the entire subject needs to die off from both ends of the debate, as it does neither side any good.

5. ‘What about the cooling that took place in the early part of the 20th Century’

Get ready for it deniers, that period of cooling was the result of man made pollution as well. Before the introduction of the clean air act, we released so much particle pollution into the air that we literally were blocking out the suns rays to such a high degree that we lowered the earths temperature 0.2°C. Once we lessened and or banned these forms of pollution, temperatures went back to normal, and also gave us insight into how much our Co2 pollution was warming the planet now that the particle pollution wasn’t masking it.

6. ‘Global Warming Peaked in 1998, It’s Been Cooling Ever Since’

While 1998 was a record year, it was due to multiple factors with an unusually strong El Niño being the main culprit.  On top of that, according to NASA 2005 overtook 1998 as the hottest global temperature, with 2003, 2004, and 2005 trailing right behind 1998. So the trend has in fact kept going, and the notion that 1998 was the end of global warming is entirely a myth propagated by those trying to mislead the general public.

7. ‘NASA lied, 1934 Is Actually The Hottest Year’

As of last year, many global warming deniers started to throw around the year 1934 as the hottest on record. And claim that NASA screwed up their data, or even go as far as to call it a conspiracy. The truth of that is that yes, NASA did screw up, but the 1934 data now claimed as proof that global warming is a scam, is only a half truth. What they fail to mention when they bring up 1934, is that the record temperature was for the lower 48 states only. Meaning that figure represents only 2% of the entire planet. When you look at 1934 globally, it still fits the same time line that the deniers are trying to discredit with this false ‘proof’.

By Mark Johnson

Flickr: Velo_city

Pick up almost any aerosol bottle on a store shelf today and you will most likely find a little little round symbol saying “No CFCs.” This refers to chlorofluorocarbons, compounds that were once used in aerosol spray cans but were found to deplete the ozone layer. Seeing as CFCs were legally banned in the United States in 1978 – over three decades ago – it is a wonder companies still feel a need to advertise that they have found a way to make a spray can work without them.

This advertising method is a perfect example of what has come to be known as “greenwashing.” Greenwashing is the practice by which advertisers and producers of products mislead consumers in one way or another about the environmental merits of their product. Realizing that consumers are interested in making environmentally-friendly purchases, companies sometimes seek to adjust their advertisements and labeling to appeal to green consumers rather than adjusting the products themselves to be better.

A study conducted by the environmental marketing firm TerraChoice concluded that there are six distinct types of greenwashing used extensively in advertising. They refer to these different methods as the six “sins” of greenwashing:

1. The sin of the hidden tradeoff: attempts to portray a product as green based on the environmental merits of just one aspect of its production.
2. The sin of no proof: occurs any time an environmental claim is made without giving the consumer easy access to information that supports the claim.
3. The sin of vagueness: committed whenever advertisers make claims that are simply not precise enough to have any real meaning, such as “green” and “environmentally-friendly.”
4. The sin of irrelevance: committed whenever an advertiser touts a truthful, but unhelpful and irrelevant, environmentally-friendly aspect of a product (such as the CFC claim mentioned above).
5. The lesser of two evils: occurs when a claim attempts to make in inherently un-green product seem environmentally-friendly.
6. The sin of fibbing: committed when an advertiser makes an absolutely false claim.

Greenwashing has become a problem for consumers because there is not a reliable, standard third party to regulate the green claims of advertisers like there is in many other industries. Hopefully the six points above will help you to make a more educated purchase as a green consumer. If you can’t make sure every claim you hear is true, at least you can make sure it makes sense, which is the first step against greenwashing.