When Environmental Club isn’t volunteering at the Watershed Nature Center, raising money for environmental groups and pushing for community recycling, it’s encouraging students to be eco-conscious.

Climate change, or the rise in Earth’s average surface temperatures, has been a pressing topic since it was brought to the public’s attention by former NASA climatologist James Hansen in the summer of 1988.

Climate change has its skeptics, but 97 percent of actively publishing climate scientists say “climate-warming trends over the past century are extremely likely due to human activities,” according to the Earth Science Communications Team at NASA.

Here is a collection of common misconceptions about climate change handpicked by environmental club:

Myth 1: The climate is only changing because we are still coming out of the last ice age.

“I know that sounds a little crazy, but it’s an actual thing people say,” freshman Coleman Earnest said.

Myth 2: Large industrial regions, like China, cause great amounts of pollution and affect only the part of the ozone layer directly over them.

These regions actually thin the layer of ozone gradually, until a hole is formed at its thinnest point: the north and south poles. Because of these holes being formed, the ice caps are affected more greatly than the rest of earth, junior and vice president of Environmental Club Joshua Myung said.

Myth 3: A “few degrees” can’t hurt us.

Earth’s temperature has changed about 4 to 5 degrees from the average temperature in the last decade. It doesn’t seem like much of a threat, but the global temperature has never risen more than two degrees on an average basis like this in the last 200 years.

“In 200 years, humans have caused more destruction than had been done in all history,” Myung said. “These temperature changes affect our climate greatly.

“The formation of tornadoes, hurricanes and tsunamis are affected by temperature changes. A change of around five degrees from average temperatures can even cause the formation of such natural disasters.”

Myth 4: Environmentally friendly energy will destroy jobs.

“It [environmentally friendly energy] would actually help create jobs and help the world at the same time,” Earnest said.

Fact: Environmental Club wants you to know is climate change is happening, and your actions affect it.