The video from PragerU entitled "Climate Change: What Do Scientists Say?

" makes a number of

false and misleading statements and one of them is on the issue of climate change. It was published by
Richard Lindzen in PragerU. First posted in April 2016 on PragerU's website, this video about climate
change was just recently shared on Facebook in May 2020. Several statements regarding climate change
were determined by scientists who reviewed such video to be false and misleading to viewers.

While watching his video, I noticed a certain argument that he mentioned in the video about CO2
emissions. In one part of his video, former MIT professor Richard Lindzen, who makes this argument
that there’s no enough evidence that pertains CO2 emissions as the primary cause of climate change.
And as I hear his claims, I began to question my current knowledge about climate change. I acknowledge
his authority in this field of studies as a former MIT professor but it doesn’t sit right with me. I strongly
disagree to his claims. It doesn’t mean I question his authority on this field though. In my opinion, his
argument is very untrue. As the matter of fact, there had been many studies conducted that contradicts
the said argument and they all came up with the same conclusion - The main cause of climate change
has been an increase in CO2 emissions, and that is due to human activities. In fact, the CO2 level in the
atmosphere is significantly higher than it has been for at least the last 800,000 years. And when I said
that most of this emission are caused by human activities, it means that throughout the course of time,
as these human activities continues, the increase in CO2 emissions is expected to continue as well. In
fact, approximately 100% of the global warming trend seen since 1950 is attributed to human-caused
emissions of greenhouse gases and aerosols. This confirms that emissions of greenhouse gases such as
CO2 over the past 150 years have been the main cause of global warming.

In addition, Mr. Lindzen makes the false claim that "the climate has changed amazingly little" during the
past 30 years without defining how little is measured. Though, he did provide illustration of what looks
to be worldwide monthly temperature anomalies from 1997 to 2016, which gives support this claim.
But, if you look closer to this illustration, you will find that the y-axis in the graph is not labeled. Many
reviewers took noticed of it, even I. There seems to be inconsistences to the graph he just showed. The
viewer is misled about the extent of global warming since this sample of temperature data is cherry-
picked from the complete record of worldwide monthly temperature anomalies. The whole record of
worldwide monthly temperature anomalies from the late 1800s to 2019 reveals a definite trend of
global warming. Additionally, according to scientific research, "the twentieth century, for more than 98
percent of the globe occurred during the warmest period of the past two millennia", which literally
means that the years before experienced a “not so warm” temperature.

The statement that "CO2 is a greenhouse gas without which life on Earth is not possible, but adding it to
the atmosphere should lead to some warming" is another false statement made in the video. Despite
the fact that CO2 is essential for life on Earth, elevated atmospheric CO2 concentrations have disrupted
the global carbon cycle and led to a number of negative effects, including trends in weather extremes,
ocean acidification, and other impacts on land and marine ecosystems.

Dr. Lindzen’s verbal and visual claims that the rate of change of contemporary global warming is ‘little’,
are false. This video has "extremely poor" overall scientific credibility and was primarily rated as
inaccurate and misleading by scientists.
Overall, I strongly believe that several claims made in the video about climate change are incorrect, not
supported by credible and scientific evidence, and very misleading to the viewers.