Straw man fallacy

Misinformation in unfortunately common in environmental communication. For example, this reasoning contains a fallacy called "straw man fallacy", which occurs when someone misrepresents or distorts their opponent's argument to make it easier to attack or dismiss:

"They keep banging on about how the warming of the atmosphere causes rising sea levels, but if that was happening we’d have seen it by now! It’s been countless decades since they first started predicting this, but here we still are."

In this case, the argument misrepresents the scientific consensus on climate change by suggesting that because the predicted impacts haven't been immediately observed, the entire claim about the link between warming atmosphere and rising sea levels is invalid.

Learn more about climate change denial and how to deal with misinformation and fallacies: https://medium.com/climate-conscious/shocked-by-climate-change-denial-how-to-deal-with-misinformation-4aefff91c232