A severe drought in Monterrey, Mexico; deaths after a fracture of the Marmolada glacier in Italy; an upcoming heat wave across Europe: This is just a brief list of more and more natural phenomena that climate activists see as obvious evidence of that our world is warming fast. But there are still people worldwide who deny climate change. According to a YouGov study from 2022 that included 2,059 German participants, 5% do not believe in global warming. In the US, according to a YouGov study from June 2022 with 1,487 respondents, 9% do not believe in climate change and 23% are unsure if it exists. And the number of climate sceptics has increased: In July 2021, only 6% of the 1,496 respondents did not believe in climate change, while 15% were unsure. The northern Mexican city of Monterrey has been hit by a monthslong severe drought, as shown by the almost dried-up Boca Reservoir Klaus Oberauer, a cognitive psychologist at the University of Zurich, told DW that it does not depend on the level of education whether someone believes in climate change or not. He calls climate change denial a “sophisticated political strategy”: People define a scientific question in terms of a particular worldview in order to identify with a certain political orientation. However, the question of whether climate change exists is not a question of feelings or of a certain view of the world, but one of facts. This fact check intends to provide these. Claim: “There is no global warming, no climate change,”a user writes on Twitter (archived here) — and publishes a CNN interview with the meteorologist John Coleman, the co-founder of the Weather Channel. In the interview, he denies global warming exists. DW fact check: False The video was screened on TV back in 2014. The Weather Channel clearly distanced itself from Coleman’s statements. According to media reports, the meteorologist died in 2018 — yet climate deniers keep referring to him as a living and relevant presence. The statement in the tweet is unproven and contradicts scientific findings. Is climate change scientifically proven? Yes, global warming and climate change are scientifically proven — and have been for decades. In fact, researchers have found that climate change began over 180 years ago, at the start of the Industrial Revolution. In the Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), scientists from 195 countries write that there is growing evidence of weather extremes such as heat waves, heavy precipitation, droughts and tropical cyclones. Additionally, they found proof of human influence in global warm …
Fact check: Why climate change is real – DW (English)
