WASHINGTON: A misleading and an ambiguous diagram circulating on various platforms of social media minimizes human contributions to carbon dioxide levels in the Earth’s atmosphere, amplifies “natural” levels and downplays the climate impact of carbon dioxide increases, climate experts said.
The graph shared on different platforms of social media breaks down atmospheric gases by percentage and highlights a portion of carbon dioxide attributed to human actions.
Fact Check
Socia media users circulated a message with the caption: “Don’t tell me to change our life style and get into all types of hardship to slightly change what amounts to 0,0016 % of the atmosphere, the human activity-produced carbon dioxide.”
However, climate experts told Reuters that different activities of human beings have increased atmospheric carbon dioxide, contributing a third of the present level, and that neither the proportion of carbon dioxide relative to other gases nor the proportion of carbon dioxide that existed “naturally” in the pre-industrial era versus what human actions add are relevant to the climate impact of increasing CO2 in the climate. Experts said that diagram has misrepresented Human carbon dioxide contribution to climate.
