Climate Change Deniers: which lie to tell?

For 800,000 years, the glacial interglacial cycles were driven by orbital cycles combined with a natural oscillation of CO2 between 170 and 300 ppm. Currently the Earth's orbital eccentricity is at a near million year low, that prohibits either glaciation or deglaciation. The Earth should be in very slow and steady cooling phase. The next ice age was due in 50,000 years. However, burning hydrocarbons and changes in land use has increased atmospheric CO2 to over 420 ppm and it's still rising. That increase in CO2 has led to:
- a significant increase in global temperature,
- a significant increases in temperatures at urban and rural stations,
- a significant increases in sea surface temperatures (as measured by both ship sensors and buoys),
- significant increases in ocean heat content,
- significant tropospheric warming (as measured by satellites and weather balloons),
- an increase in atmospheric moisture and extreme precipitation,
- an increase in the length of wildfire seasons,
- significant reduction in sea ice extent,
- worldwide glacial retreat,
- widespread permafrost thaw,
- weakening of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation,
- widespread changes in plant and animal phenology, and
- a decrease in ocean pH.
We know CO2 is the problem because the physical properties of CO2 and other atmospheric gases are known (e.g. Eunice Foote, John Tyndall). CO2 absorbs and reemits infrared radiation and therefore slows down heat from the Sun leaving the Earth. That understanding has been validated by practical outcomes (e.g. heat seeking missiles) and empirical observations (e.g. troposphere warming + stratospheric cooling; nights warming faster than days; winters warming faster than summers; faster warming in the northern high latitudes) that match predictions made by scientists in the 1980s and earlier (e.g. Svante Arrhenius, Syukuro Manabe, Jim Hansen). The current rapid warming cannot be accounted for by changes in Solar output or volcanos or any natural cycle. All possibilities have been extensively studied. Climate change deniers will show you misleading graphs that are labelled with present day where 1855 or 1950 should be. Don't fall for it. To get reliable information if science journals are too difficult for you to access try watching all the videos by Simon Clark and Potholer54. The lectures by Professors Richard Ally, Will Steffen and Stefan Ramsdorf are also easy to find.

we're in a carbon drought rn

No we aren't. That's an objectively false lie spread by the oil lobby. Read my comment above.

The average atmospheric carbon dioxide levels were much higher millions of years ago. Around 50 million years ago, CO2 levels may have reached 1000 parts per million, and the global average temperature was probably about 10 degrees warmer than today

*plant life thrived and all animals were much larger at this time*

Nope, some plants diversified (palms) but others suffered (pines, spruces). There were many regional shifts in ecosystems. Insect herbivory increased (what many would call pests today) and several types of mammals went extinct. Many freshwater ecosystems were negatively impacted by algal blooms.

The suggestion that greater warmth and CO2 must always be good for plants is unscientific and reductive.

1. Higher CO2 (and warmth) does not universally enhance plant growth. While C3 plants (e.g., wheat) may show modest gains, C4 plants (e.g., corn) are already efficient at concentrating CO2 and exhibit minimal improvement. Benefits plateau due to other limiting factors like nutrients or water, e.g.
- Ainsworth & Rogers 2007: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-3040.2007.01641.x
- Huang et al. 2019: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-019-0838-x
- Shaheen et al. 2022: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/B9780323854498000099
- Lobell et al. 2025: https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.2502789122

2. Although greater CO2 (and warmth) has driven some global greening, many regions are now experiencing browning due to vapor pressure deficiency, where warmer air increases evaporation, stressing plants.
- Yuan et al. 2020: https://www.science.org/doi/full/10.1126/sciadv.aax1396
- Piao et al. 2019: https://www.nature.com/articles/s43017-019-0001-x
- Treharne et al. 2019: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/gcb.14500
- Chen et al. 2022: https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2022EF002788
- Bassett et al. 2026: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-10039-5

3. Plants grown in elevated CO2 tend to have lower protein, zinc, and iron content, posing risks to human nutrition, especially in regions dependent on staple crops.
- Smith & Myers 2018: https://nature.com/articles/s41558-018-0253-3
- Ainsworth and Long 2023: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/gcb.15375

4. Most crop yield increases since the 1950s are due to synthetic fertilizers from the Haber-Bosch process, not CO2.
- Erisman et al. 2008: https://www.nature.com/articles/ngeo325
- Smil 1999: https://www.nature.com/articles/22672

5. If plants benefited significantly from CO2, atmospheric levels of CO2 wouldn’t keep rising (>420 ppm today). Warming oceans absorb less CO2 due to acidification and reduced solubility, amplifying atmospheric accumulation.
- Friedlingstein et al. 2021: https://tyndall.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/ScienceBrief_Review_FEEDBACK_Oct2021.pdf
Similarly, burning long chain hydrocarbons also uses up oxygen which is not replaced by plants.
- Huang et al. 2018: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S209592731830375X#f0025

6. The fact is that CO2 absorbs infrared and re-emits it in all directions, including back toward the Earth's surface. The 2nd law of thermodynamics doesn't apply to thermal radiation because it occurs due to the random motion and vibration of atoms and molecules within an object. This process slows the escape of heat energy from the troposphere into space, leading to a net warming of the planet (~1.3 C since 1850).
- Pierrehumbert 2011: https://geosci.uchicago.edu/~rtp1/papers/PhysTodayRT2011.pdf
- Loeb et al. 2021: https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2021GL093047
The quantum structure of CO2 has been identified which further validates its physical properties.
- Wordsworth et al. 2024: https://doi.org/10.3847/PSJ/ad226d

Satellites have measured significant reductions in the infrared leaving the Earth and significant increases in the infrared coming back down from the atmosphere.
- Kramer et al. 2021: https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2020GL091585
- Feldman et al. 2015: https://www.nature.com/articles/nature14240
- Harries et al 2001: https://www.nature.com/articles/35066553
- Wang and Liang, 2009: https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2009JD011800

Equally, the energy received from the Sun (Total Solar Irradiance) has not increased in recent decades.
- Lean (2017) https://oxfordre.com/climatescience/display/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228620.001.0001/acrefore-9780190228620-e-9

For every one degree C of warming the atmospheric can hold 7% more water moisture. That means greater evaporation, greater drought, more intense rainfall, more intense flooding. Milder winters also allows more pests and weeds which are expensive to treat and control.

Yes, and there was no human civilization, coastal cities, or modern agriculture.. so what's your point? Solar output was slightly lower ~50 million years ago so the high CO2 had to drive even more warming to reach those temperatures. Your comment simply highlights the strong long-term link between atmospheric CO2 and global temperature, consistent with physics (greenhouse effect) and multiple independent proxies. Average global sea level was over 100 m deeper due to the lack of permanent ice at the poles and steric expansion. Many animals went extinct due to the increase in temperature and that increase took place slowly over thousands of years not a couple of hundred. Look up research by Foster et al. 2017 in Nature Communications or Judd et al. 2024 in Science

my point is if the save the planet movement was designed with good cause you'd talk about china who burns 35% of the human world's co2 emissions which is 3x more then the U.S does
i understand the concern and i do wish to preserve our planet but i don't want to destroy our economy on a whim
we can start looking into this when we have the technology
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gas_emissions_by_China

No, that wasn't your point at all: you are pivoting to a "new" talking point which you feel is some kind of gotcha after your other silly attempts at gotchas were refuted. Once again your attempt at a gotcha simply highlights how little you know and understand.
1. China has historically received widespread international criticism of their emissions including criticism from climate scientists. Jim Hansen (former NASA scientist) has long acknowledged China’s massive emissions and coal use as a major challenge. ClimateActionTracker has an entire page dedicated to China and rates its policies and targets as "Highly insufficient" for Paris Agreement goals (1.5°C pathway).
2. China's emission per capita still remain far less than USA and Canada.
3. USAs cumulative emissions remain far more than China despite the much smaller population (roughly twice as much cumulatively).
4. China now leads globally in solar, wind, EV, and battery deployment such that their total CO2 emissions have been flat or slightly falling for nearly two years now,
- https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-chinas-co2-emissions-have-now-been-flat-or-falling-for-21-months/
e.g.
- https://bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-09-09/china-s-green-push-may-cut-global-fossil-use-by-2030-says-ember
- https://eenews.net/articles/fossil-fuel-use-falls-in-china-as-clean-energy-booms/
5. China have continues to invest in public transport with over 50,000 km of highspeed rail, 11,000 km of urban rail, and daily ridership exceeding 90 million passenger trips. In 2025 gasoline demand and transport emissions in China actually fell ~3%.
If you have anymore (bad faith oil lobby) "gotchas" please don't be shy: I've heard them all before. Happy to explain why they are misleading or just outright false.