ScienceClimate Change climate change denierscarbon dioxide

6 Graphics To Show To Your Climate-Denying Uncle This Thanksgiving

Pumpkin pie with a side of science.
Chris D'Angelo
By 

Senior Reporter, HuffPost

Sean Locke via Getty Images

Trying to have any meaningful discussion about the climate change crisis with someone who rejects mainstream science is a recipe for frustration.

And with a president-elect who has said climate change is “bullshit” and a “hoax,” it’s likely many family holiday celebrations this year will include unproductive and, shall we say, spirited banter.

“Climate change is here and humans are the cause!” you might shout. “Just look at the rising seas, extreme weather, blistering global temperatures ...”

To which your Uncle Eddie may snap, “It’s the sun,” or, “Actually, young whippersnapper, the planet is cooling.”

Lucky for you, we’ve compiled some powerful and sobering climate visuals that will do the talking for you. This isn’t a blessing to go looking for trouble ― only a way out of it should it arise.

If your climate-denying relatives still aren’t convinced, walk away ― slowly ― and focus your attention on the leftover stuffing.

1
Our carbon footprint says it all.
Scripps Institution of Oceanography
This graph shows the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, as measured at Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii, from 1958 to today. In September, scientists at Mauna Loa announced that C02 levels had likely surpassed the threshold of 400 parts per million permanently.
2
Year over year, the trend becomes more obvious.
Ed Hawkins
This graphic by climate scientist Ed Hawkins shows 167 maps of temperature change from 1850 to 2016.
3
Arctic sea ice is quickly vanishing.
NASA Earth Observatory
This graphic shows the loss of sea ice in the Arctic between September 1984 and September 2016. In that time, the amount of ice five years or older throughout the Arctic sea ice cap during its yearly minimum extent dropped from 1.86 million square kilometers to 110,000 square kilometers, according to NASA.
4
Global temperatures are spiraling upward.
Ed Hawkins
Created by Ed Hawkins, a climate scientist at the University of Reading in the United Kingdom, this GIF depicts global temperatures steadily rising over the past 166 years. As the planet warms, the line corkscrews outward, inching closer to the 1.5-degree Celsius aspirational warming limit agreed to during the historic climate change agreement in Paris in December.
5
We’re breaking record temperatures on a regular basis.
Joshua Stevens/NASA Earth Observatory
A monthly analysis by NASA scientists found August 2016 was the warmest August in 136 years of modern record keeping. The global temperature that month was 0.16 degrees Celsius warmer than the previous warmest August, in 2014, and 0.98 degrees Celsius warmer than the mean August temperature from 1951 to 1980, according to NASA.
6
We’re losing Arctic sea ice at an unprecedented rate.
Climate.gov, adapted from NSIDC’s Charctic interactive sea ice graph
This animation shows Arctic sea ice extent -- the area of ocean with a certain threshold of ice, usually 15 percent --from 1979 through Sept. 13, 2016.

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Climate Change climate change denierscarbon dioxidesea iceglobal temperatures

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