Expert debunks conspiracy theory about origins of global crisis: 'It's established science'

Susie Dodds of Australia's AAP FactCheck team (@aapfactcheck) shared a recent TikTok video to dispel misleading claims about a 1991 climate report, illustrating that scientists have been warning about humanity's impact on the Earth's temperature for decades.

According to the video, another social media source was spreading false claims about "elites" making up climate change in the 1990s to push for global control. However, there are volumes of evidence to easily dispel this conspiratorial notion.

@aapfactcheck A report published by a global think tank has been misrepresented in a social media video to spread false claims about the origins of climate change. Susie Dodds explains. Read Kate Atkinson's full report at the link in our bio. #climatechange #globalwarming ♬ original sound - AAP FactCheck

The misleading source referred to a 1991 report by the Club of Rome, a global think tank, which has since pushed back, telling AAP FactCheck that it was a warning about "the real human-driven threats to the environment."

This triggered knee-jerk reactions from the trolling community, which delivered quips like "the great climate scam" and "socialist nonsense."

However, Dodds offered that "studies linking human activities to climate impacts go as far back as the 1890s."

Data supporting the harmful effects of carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere can be traced back to 1896, in a paper by Swedish scientist and engineer Svante Arrhenius called "On the influence of carbonic acid in the air upon the temperature on the ground," using a now-outdated term for carbon gas.

Further work was shared in 1938 by Guy Callendar, who noted an increase in global temperatures over the previous 50 years, according to UK Research and Innovation. In 1958, Charles David Keeling compared the levels of carbon in both the air and the water, marking some of the first atmospheric tests.

Significantly, researchers Syukuro Manabe and Richard Wetherald produced the world's first accurate computer model of the Earth's climate in 1967.

Their predictions of how carbon affects global temperatures match measurements from the pre-industrial revolution through today, which show that levels have risen by about 50%, and temperatures have increased by 1.1 degrees Celsius (1.98 degrees Fahrenheit).

"So no, climate change is not a conspiracy," says Dodds. "It's established science, and it has been for nearly a century."

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Another commenter wrote, "It was [ExxonMobil] that 'discovered' the impact of fossil fuels on the climate in the '70s and then spent decades lobbying in the interests of the fossil fuel sector."

In 2015, investigative journalists confirmed that Exxon oil company knew that its dirty fuel products could lead to planet warming with "dramatic environmental effects before the year 2050," a report in Science explained.

It's imperative that we lean into the wealth of science and knowledge about the changing climate, which is causing increased hazards due to rising temperatures.

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