Climate change is one of the most discussed topics in today's political arguments. It's unfortunate that science has somehow become partisan in recent times, but that's what you get when many of your own politicians have their campaigns funded by energy companies. There are plenty of logical fallacies and misinformation being passed around lately, so to help clear the air (pun definitely intended), here are three of the most common arguments I've personally heard to deny climate change and how science has already disproven them.

1. "CO2 isn't a pollutant."

"There are plenty of ways the earth heats and cools. There's no evidence to suggest carbon dioxide has an effect."

Let me begin refuting this by explaining the greenhouse effect. We've known about this process and the role that carbon gases take part in it since the early 1800s when it was first argued for by Joseph Fourier. The greenhouse effect is the process by which heat is trapped in Earth's atmosphere by greenhouse gases. This includes methane, ozone, carbon dioxide, and even water vapor among many others.

The greenhouse effect isn't inherently bad. In fact, it's the reason why the Earth is able to hold life! Without it, the Earth would be almost as cold as Mars - a planet that lacks an atmosphere for the most part. With too much of it, Earth would look more like Venus - a living example of a runaway greenhouse effect with its intensely high temperatures resulting from an atmosphere comprised almost entirely of carbon dioxide and sulfur. Greenhouse gases act as a layer of insulation allowing heat to be trapped on the surface while only letting some of the heat back out into space. Shortwave radiation (the light emitted from the sun) travels through the atmosphere and hits earth's surface, which turns the radiation into long wave (heat) while some is reflected back into space.

The object the effect is named after serves as the perfect example. Greenhouses are made of glass which allows sunlight in, but not much of the heat to escape. Now imagine if we increased the thickness of the glass? The same amount of light would be able to enter the greenhouse, but even less heat would be able to escape. This is what happens when we pour man-made carbon emissions into the atmosphere.

This point is the core of why climate change is happening and must be understood in order to explain climate change any further.

2. "Climate change is natural."

"Okay sure, so carbon does affect the atmosphere. So what? It's varied in the past, we don't have anything to do with it."

I hate this argument because while technically it is true, it's missing out on an incredibly important factor: The rate at which the climate is changing and the increase in which carbon dioxide is entering the atmosphere has never happened before in the history of the Earth. It takes tens of thousands of years to change the climate as much as we have in just the past century and a half. We have experienced a noticeable spike in the correlation between carbon gas density and temperature in recent years as observed by the NOAA's Mauna Loa Observatory.

By no means is this natural.

Someone might also argue that we have a natural carbon cycle which continuously emits and takes back carbon from the atmosphere. Once again, that is technically true. But as of the past century and a half, we have continued putting out carbon dioxide at a much faster rate than the natural cycle can keep up with. Plants can only do so much, and considering we also have the tendency to cut down the very forests that replace said carbon dioxide with oxygen, we're just compounding our problems.

3. "Climate science isn't credible"

"There isn't enough agreement on the science behind climate change."

Certain media outlets would like you to think that wouldn't they? Well, I'm glad to tell you that this is unequivocally false. If anything, it's one of the most conclusive results scientists can agree on to date. 97% of climate scientists agree with the data telling us that rapid climate change is being produced by human involvement. And scientists generally don't like to agree with each other. The whole point of many scientific research projects is to try and disprove earlier data found in the field. So far nothing has shown that what we have found is incorrect.

I'm often simply confused as to why people will immediately accept chemistry, physics, biology, geology, oceanography, etc., but when they're all used together and come out with the same result it's not sound science? This claim isn't from just a couple of scientists with a wild assumption about greenhouse gases and their effect on the earth. This is a whole slew of worldwide scientific fields and organizations coming together and saying we are in big trouble.

Climate science isn't hard to understand. We just have to wade through the muck of everything that's being told to us by peers, news, or politicians, and look at the real data that's being put out worldwide. If deniers would actually take a second to sit down and read about the science behind climate change I have no doubt there would be a shift in tone for where our country should take us in the fight to reduce it. Because as soon as they do people will realize what's at stake. People often say that we need to take care of the earth but I think that's not actually the case. The earth will be fine - given time. It's us that will sew the consequences of inaction.