No, the Earth-sun distance isn’t causing global warming. Human activity is

The sun surely warms the Earth. But a widely shared social media post says the sun — not human-caused climate change — is why scientists are detecting changing global temperatures.

"Finally the truth! ... Climate change is cyclical and it’s because of our Sun," the March 19 Facebook post claims. Not because of us," said the post, which  includes a screenshot of a March 19 X post from Robin Monoti, an Italian architect and film producer who vocally opposed lockdowns related to the COVID-19 pandemic.

"The idea that CO2 causes climate change is another laughable myth," Monoti said. "The Sun is not static, the real reason of changing temperature is that the Sun-Earth distance varies due to what is known as solar-inertial motion." He called global warming a "historical con by the oligarchic class" to increase taxes.

The Facebook post was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)

The distance between Earth and the sun can affect the Earth’s long-term climate. However, climate scientists agree that the sun does not significantly shift the planet’s modern trend toward ever-warming temperatures.

"The warming we have seen over the last few decades is too rapid to be linked to changes in Earth’s orbit, and too large to be caused by solar activity," according to NASA. The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which includes scientists from 195 countries, said "it is unequivocal that humans are causing the warming. Changes in the sun's activity and volcanic eruptions are not the cause of the warming trend."

"Global warming" and "climate change" are sometimes used interchangeably, but global warming is a "symptom" of climate change. There is international consensus among climate scientists that human activity is leading to increased carbon emissions and carbon traps heat and warms the planet. Carbon dioxide emissions come from a range of industries, including energy, through power plants; agriculture; and transportation. 

Carbon dioxide emissions, methane and other greenhouse gases trap heat in the atmosphere and worsen global warming.

"Methane is more than 28 times as potent as carbon dioxide at trapping heat in the atmosphere, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. "Over the last two centuries, methane concentrations in the atmosphere have more than doubled, largely due to human-related activities."

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Tom Tancredo

stated on May 15, 2007 in Columbia, S.C.

"For every single scientist that tells you (global warming is) happening and that it's our fault...I can stack up another group of reports that say just the opposite."

Methane is responsible for about 30% of global warming according to the United Nations Environment Programme. Agriculture is the main, but not the only, source of methane emissions.

These emissions have an everyday impact: the World Meteorological Organization said 2023 was the hottest year ever recorded.

The idea of the Earth-sun distance causing global warming is not new and has gained recent prominence. 

In 2020, the journal Scientific Reports retracted a 2019 paper that it published that gave credence to the Earth-sun distance idea. Withdrawing the study, the editors said "post-publication peer review has shown that this assumption is inaccurate. … As a result the Editors no longer have confidence in the conclusions presented." The retraction notice said one of the original study’s four co-authors backed the decision to withdraw it.

We rate the claim that the Earth-sun distance is the cause of global warming False.