Arguments
California wildfires are being magnified & made so much worse by the bad environmental laws which aren’t allowing massive amounts of readily available water to be properly utilized. It is being diverted into the Pacific Ocean. Must also tree clear to stop fire from spreading!
Explaining climate change science & rebutting global warming misinformation
Scientific skepticism is healthy. Scientists should always challenge themselves to improve their understanding. Yet this isn't what happens with climate change denial. Skeptics vigorously criticise any evidence that supports man-made global warming and yet embrace any argument, op-ed, blog or study that purports to refute global warming. This website gets skeptical about global warming skepticism. Do their arguments have any scientific basis? What does the peer reviewed scientific literature say?
What does ‘mean’ actually mean?
Posted on 14 August 2018 by Kevin C
This is a re-post from Climate Lab Book
We commonly represent temperature data on a grid covering the surface of the earth. To calculate the mean temperature we can calculate the mean of all the grid cell values, with each value weighted according to the cell area – roughly the cosine of the latitude.
Now suppose you are offered two sets of temperature data, one covering 83% of the planet, and the other covering just 18%, with the coverage shown below. If you calculate the cosine weighted mean of the grid cells with observations, which set of data do you think will give the better estimate of the global mean surface temperature anomaly?
If you can’t give a statistical argument why the answer is probably (B), then now might be a good time to think a bit more about the meaning of the word “mean”. Hopefully the video below will help.
Why is this important?
Trump reignited his war with California, but his Tweet got burned
Posted on 13 August 2018 by dana1981
Last week, 18 wildfires were burning at once in California, including its largest in history, destroying over 1,100 homes and forcing tens of thousands of residents to evacuate. The smoke made the air in the state’s Central Valley unhealthy to breathe for a record 15 consecutive days, as I can personally attest.
Donald Trump decided to use the opportunity to renew his war with California by nonsensically blaming the wildfires on environmental laws.
Donald J. Trump✔@realDonaldTrump
It’s no surprise that Donald Trump dislikes California. His 2.9m national popular vote deficit to Hillary Clinton is a sore spot, and her margin of victory in California was by 30% and 4.3m votes. California has also long been a leader in developing laws to clean and protect the environment, and Trump despises regulations that benefit public health and welfare at the expense of industry profits.
And so, we got the Tweet bemoaning water being “diverted into the Pacific Ocean” (in scientific terms, they’re called “rivers”). Daniel Berlant, assistant deputy director of Cal Fire immediately noted that water isn’t firefighters’ problem:
We have plenty of water to fight these wildfires, but let’s be clear: It’s our changing climate that is leading to more severe and destructive fires
2018 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #32
Posted on 12 August 2018 by John Hartz
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Story of the Week...
On climate change, it’s time to start panicking
The crisis over global warming warrants an unparalleled response
(Getty/Photo Montage by Salon)
It is time for us to panic about global warming. Indeed, a proper state of panic is long overdue.
Global warming has made the news for a number of reasons this week: The Supreme Court rejected a request by President Donald Trump to halt a lawsuit by children and teenagers to force the federal government to address man-made climate change; Trump's Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Transportation took new steps to reverse President Barack Obama's rules requiring car manufacturers to steadily reduce greenhouse gas pollution from their vehicles; former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger denounced those same Trump policies as "stupid"; and The New York Times ran a brilliant piece documenting how, between 1979 and 1989, the world had the opportunity to effectively address man-made climate change... and squandered it.
Yet this is one of those issues in which — because there are so many twists and turns and overwhelming details — it is easy to lose sight of a crucial fact: If we do not resolve the problem of man-made climate change, it could quite literally spell the end of human civilization.
"There will be and already is major consequences and they grow over time. It does not look good," Kevin Trenberth, a a Distinguished Senior Scientist in the Climate Analysis Section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research at the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, told Salon by email. "The effects are always local but there are more and more of them and the consequences are major. These includes floods and drought, heat waves and wild fires." He also pointed Salon in the direction of a paper he co-authored that elaborated on how Hurricane Harvey in particular could be linked to climate change.
On climate change, it’s time to start panicking by Matthew Rozsa, Salon, Aug 5, 2018
2018 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #32
Posted on 11 August 2018 by John Hartz
A chronological listing of news articles posted on the Skeptical Science Facebook Page during the past week.
Editor's Pick
Scientists mock Trump’s tweet on wildfires as ‘comedically ill-informed’ and ‘unmitigated crap’
Trump's climate denial is "a crime against the planet" warns climatologist.
Embers Smolder from Wildfires Near Clearlake Oaks, California, On August 5, 2018. Credit: Noah Berger/AFP/Getty Images
Two years ago, an actual headline from CBS in Sacramento was, “Donald Trump Tells California ‘There Is No Drought’ As Drought Continues.”
And now, on Sunday evening, Trump’s denial of reality in California continued, as he attempted to blame the ever-worsening wildfires in the state on everything but climate change.
“California wildfires are being magnified & made so much worse by the bad environmental laws which aren’t allowing massive amount of readily available water to be properly utilized,” the President tweeted. “It is being diverted into the Pacific Ocean. Must also tree clear to stop fire spreading!”
The tweet came just hours after the Trump administration declared the California wildfires a major disaster.
Scientists mock Trump’s tweet on wildfires as ‘comedically ill-informed’ and ‘unmitigated crap’ by Joe Romm, Think Progress, Aug 6, 2018
Welcome to the Pliocene
Posted on 10 August 2018 by John Mason
The whole story in a table....
The graphic below (click on it for a large version) is adapted from a table in the supporting information from a newly published paper in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). Trajectories of the Earth System in the Anthropocene, as the paper is entitled, looks at several climate states - the present day, the mid-Holocene, the relatively warm Eemian interglacial and, heading back a bit further into geological time, the mid-Pliocene and mid-Miocene. Data are from palaeoclimate studies. The right-hand column assesses our chances of stabilising our climate at these states in the coming decades. In some cases, it is already too late - we have gone beyond the physical parameters that support such climates:
Data details: atmospheric CO2, temperature anomaly relative to the pre-industrial era and sea-levels relative to now measured and from palaeoclimate records. The graphic, created by "JG", is adapted from Table S1 from the paper's supporting information section, available here. Data sources are fully referenced.
New research, July 30 - August 4, 2018
Posted on 10 August 2018 by Ari Jokimäki
A selection of new climate related research articles is shown below.
Climate change
Temperature, precipitation, wind
Optimal Ranking Regime Analysis of U.S. Summer Temperature and Degree-Days: 1895-2015
Detectable Impacts of the Past Half‐Degree Global Warming on Summertime Hot Extremes in China
Trends of the observed temperature and its variations in the Tamil Nadu State of India
Factcheck: How global warming has increased US wildfires
Posted on 9 August 2018 by Zeke Hausfather
This is a re-post from Carbon Brief
In the midst of record or near-record heatwaves across the northern hemisphere this summer, deadly wildfires have swept through many regions, such as the western US, Europe and Siberia. This has focused a great deal of public attention on the role that climate change plays in wildfires.
Recently, some commentators have tried to dismiss recent increases in the areas burnt by fires in the US, claiming that fires were much worse in the early part of the century. To do this, they are ignoring clear guidance by scientists that the data should not be used to make comparisons with earlier periods.
The US National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC), which maintains the database in question, tells Carbon Brief that people should not “put any stock” in numbers prior to 1960 and that comparing the modern fire area to earlier estimates is “not accurate or appropriate”.
Here, Carbon Brief takes a look at the links between climate change and wildfires, both in the US and across the globe. As with any environmental issue, there are many different contributing factors, but it is clear that in the western US climate change has made – and will continue to make – fires larger and more destructive.
As one scientist tells Carbon Brief: “There is no question whatsoever that climate plays a role in the increase in fires.”
More area burned
Many areas of the western US are currently being ravaged by record-setting wildfires for the second year in a row. The Mendocino Complex fire in California is now the largest on record in the state, with firefighters expect the fires to keep burning for at least the rest of the month.
In California, 14 of the 20 largest wildfires on record have occurred over the past 15 years. At the same time, the western US has experienced some of its warmest temperatures on record, with 10 of the past 15 years among the 15 warmest years on record, based on temperature records from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
According to data from the NIFC, there has been a clear trend in increased area burned by wildfires in the US since the 1980s, when reliable US-wide estimates based on fire situation reports from federal and state agencies became available.
Climate change science comeback strategies
Posted on 8 August 2018 by Guest Author
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Karin Kirk
Credit: Image by Karin Kirk.
Staircase wit. L’esprit de l’escalier. It’s the way the perfect response in an uncomfortable conversation comes cruelly late, occurring only after the crux moment has long since passed, and you’re descending the stairs on your way home.
Why didn’t I think of that? you ask, kicking yourself for temporarily forgetting how carbon isotopes show that fossil fuels are indeed the source of the CO2 buildup in the atmosphere.
As the American culture war flares up like a SoCal heat wave, many feel understandably helpless watching misinformation accelerate throughout society. But even as you hit “enter” on a witty post correcting the spelling and grammar of someone who suggests scientists are incompetent, at some level you probably know this doesn’t improve the situation. Lobbing talking points back and forth typically only entrenches deeply held positions, a process known as belief polarization.
Want to see some expert comeback strategies for discussing #climatechange with a doubter?CLICK TO TWEET
So how then, to respond? Do you nod, smile, and walk away with clenched teeth? Do you whip out your smartphone and wave around graphs of ice core data?
Here are four strategies, each from a distinctly different point of view, each penned by an expert, each useful in either a face-to-face conversation on an online chat. The first lesson is this: have a conscious strategy, rather than a knee-jerk response. Think about where you want to go and what your goals are. And if your aim is to simply make the other person feel bad or look bad, then maybe reconsider if that’s helpful to either of you.
Let’s start with one of the most common climate contrarian remarks of all. One we’ve all heard many times: but the climate has changed before!
Pollution is slowing the melting of Arctic sea ice, for now
Posted on 7 August 2018 by John Abraham
The Arctic is one of the “canaries in the coal mine” for climate change. Long ago, scientists predicted it would warm quicker than other parts of the planet, and they were right. Currently, the Arctic is among the fastest-warming places on the planet. Part of the reason is that as the Arctic warms, ice melts and ocean water is uncovered. The ocean is darker than ice so it in turn absorbs more sunlight and increases its warming. This is a feedback loop.
Another reason is that the Arctic doesn’t get that much sunlight so increased energy from the atmosphere has a bigger influence there than it would have elsewhere.
Scientists have looked to the Arctic for clues and hints of human climate change over the past decades. The fact that the Arctic is warming has led to a 70% reduction in the volume of summer sea ice – an enormous loss of ice.
Decline in September Arctic ice extent (not volume). Illustration: Nasa
A recent paper just published in the Journal of Climate by the American Meteorological Society takes an in-depth look at how fast the Arctic ice is melting and why. According to the paper, the authors completed a detection and attribution study of Arctic sea ice decline from 1953 to 2012. That is 60 years of data that tell the picture of climate change. The “detection” part of this study was about detecting what long-term trends are apparent over these six decades. The “attribution” part of the study is figuring out what is the cause of the trends.
The GOP and Big Oil can't escape blame for climate change
Posted on 6 August 2018 by dana1981
Last week’s issue of the New York Times magazine was devoted to a single story by Nathaniel Rich that explored how close we came to an international climate agreement in 1989, and why we failed. The piece is worth reading – it’s a well-told, mostly accurate, and very informative story about a key decade in climate science and policy history. But sadly, it explicitly excuses the key players responsible for our continued failure.
Culprit #1: The Republican Party
Rich’s piece immediately goes off the rails in its Prologue, where he argues that the GOP isn’t responsible – at least not for the climate failures up to 1989:
Nor can the Republican Party be blamed … during the 1980s, many prominent Republicans joined Democrats in judging the climate problem to be a rare political winner: nonpartisan and of the highest possible stakes.
However, his story is peppered with examples that contradict this narrative. The world’s foremost climate scientists had published the groundbreaking National Academy of Sciences ‘Charney Report’ in 1979, concluding that a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide would most likely cause 3°C of global warming (still the consensus today), and as Rich summarizes:
2018 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #31
Posted on 5 August 2018 by John Hartz
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Stories of the Week...
Scorching Summer in Europe Signals Long-Term Climate Changes
People trying to cool down in the Trocadero Fountain in front of the Eiffel Tower in Paris. Credit: Ludovic Marin/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
In Northern Europe, this summer feels like a modern-day version of the biblical plagues. Cows are dying of thirst in Switzerland, fires are gobbling up timber in Sweden, the majestic Dachstein glacier is melting in Austria.
In London, stores are running out of fans and air-conditioners. In Greenland, an iceberg may break off a piece so large that it could trigger a tsunami that destroys settlements on shore. Last week, Sweden’s highest peak, Kebnekaise mountain, no longer was in first place after its glacier tip melted.
Southern Europe is even hotter. Temperatures in Spain and Portugal are expected to reach 105-110 degrees Fahrenheit this weekend. On Saturday, several places in Portugal experienced record highs, and over the past week, two people have died in Spain from the high temperatures, and a third in Portugal.
But in the northernmost latitudes, where the climate is warming faster than the global average, temperatures have been the most extreme, according to a study by researchers at Oxford University and the World Weather Attribution network.
Scorching Summer in Europe Signals Long-Term Climate Changes by Alissa J. Rubin, World, New York Times, Aug 4. 2018
2018 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #31
Posted on 4 August 2018 by John Hartz
A chronological listing of news articles posted on the Skeptical Science Facebook Page during the past week.
Editor's Pick
143-mph 'fire tornado' that cut a path of destruction is an ominous sign of the future
A high-tension power transmission line tipped over from a tornado-like vortex that reached speeds of possibly more than 143 mph. (Cal Fire / National Weather Service)/h5>
As authorities sifted the rubble from the fire that burned more than 1,000 residences in Shasta County, they were startled by what they encountered.
A soaring transmission tower was tipped over. Tiles were torn off the roofs of homes. Massive trees were uprooted. Vehicles were moved. In one spot, a fence post was bent around a tree, with the bark on one side sheared off.
This was not typical wildfire damage. Rather, it was strong evidence of a giant, powerful spinning vortex that accompanied the Carr fire on July 26. The tornado-like condition, lasting an hour and a half and fueled by extreme heat and intensely dry brush as California heats up to record levels, was captured in dramatic videos that have come to symbolize the destructive power of what is now California’s sixth-most destructive fire.
It may take years before scientists come to a consensus on what to exactly call this vortex — a fire whirl, as named by the National Weather Service, or a fire tornado. Whatever it’s called, it’s exceptionally rare to see a well-documented fire-fueled vortex leap out of a wildfire and enter a populated area with such size, power and duration.
143-mph 'fire tornado' that cut a path of destruction is an ominous sign of the future by Rong-Gong Lin Ii , Joseph Serna & Louis Sahagun, Los Angeles Times, Aug 3, 2018
New research, July 2-29, 2018
Posted on 3 August 2018 by Ari Jokimäki
A selection of new climate related research articles is shown below.
Climate change mitigation
Climate change communication
Place, proximity, and perceived harm: extreme weather events and views about climate change
Cool dudes in Norway: climate change denial among conservative Norwegian men
Emission savings
How important are future marine and shipping aerosol emissions in a warming Arctic summer and autumn? (open access)
The remaining potential for energy savings in UK households
Permafrost and wetland emissions could cut 1.5C carbon budget ‘by five years’
Posted on 2 August 2018 by Guest Author
This is a re-post from Carbon Brief by Robert McSweeney
Emissions of CO2 and methane from wetlands and thawing permafrost as the climate warms could cut the “carbon budget” for the Paris Agreement temperature limits by around five years, a new study says.
These natural processes are “positive feedbacks” – so called because they release more greenhouse gases as global temperatures rise, thus reinforcing the warming. They have previously not been represented in carbon budget estimates as they are not included in most climate models, the researchers say.
The findings suggest that human-caused emissions will need to be cut by an additional 20% in order to meet the Paris Agreement’s 1.5C or 2C limits, the researchers estimate.
‘Engines for turning CO2 into methane’
Over the last year or so, there has been a flurry of new carbon budget studies – using slightly different approaches to estimate how much CO2 we can emit and still hold global temperature rise to no more than 1.5C or 2C above pre-industrial levels.
(Carbon Brief summarised all the 1.5C budgets in a recent analysis piece.)
Many of these studies use global climate models to make their estimates. However, there are some processes which affect the climate that are not yet incorporated into these models.
The new study, published in Nature Geoscience, aims to fill that gap. It focuses on two processes on the land surface: thawing permafrost and natural wetlands.
These are both positive feedbacks for the climate because, as they respond to rising temperatures, they cause the release of more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
Permafrost is the name given to soil that has been frozen for at least two years. It is predominantly found in the northern hemisphere – stretching across northern reaches of Russia, Canada and Alaska.
A massive permafrost thaw slump near the Arctic Ocean coastline, Canada. Credit: National Geographic Creative/Alamy Stock Photo.
Coming full circle: from study to comedy sketch to study
Posted on 1 August 2018 by BaerbelW , David Kirtley
Over five years ago, our team published "Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature" (Cook et al. 2013) which caused quite a stir - and that, even though it wasn't the first peer-reviewed paper to find a 97% consensus on human-caused global warming. In 2014 we learned, that our study had been voted ERL's best article of 2013 and as of right now it has been downloaded a whopping 829,000+ times.
Last Week Tonight: Climate Change Debate
One of the best and arguably funniest treatments our study received, was a sketch put together in 2014 for John Oliver's HBO show "Last Week Tonight". In the segment, John Oliver illustrated to great comic effect what a statistically representative climate change debate would look like. You can view it below (warning: the video includes some profane language).
From sketch to study
As of this writing, the video has been viewed 7.8+ million times. With this many views, it's not too surprising that some researchers got curious and wanted to find out if a comedy sketch like this could have an impact on how people think about human-caused climate change. And this is exactly what Paul R. Brewer from the Center for Political Communication at the University of Delaware and Jessica McKnight of the School of Communication at Ohio State University set out to do at the end of 2014. Their study "A Statistically Representative Climate Change Debate: Satirical Television News, Scientific Consensus, and Public Perceptions of Global Warming" was published in the Atlantic Journal of Communication on June 30, 2017.
Here is the study's abstract:
Climate change made 2018 European heatwave up to ‘five times’ more likely
Posted on 31 July 2018 by Guest Author
This is a re-post from Carbon Brief
A rapid assessment by scientists of the ongoing heatwave across northern Europe this summer has found that human-caused climate change made it as much as five times more likely to have occurred.
The preliminary analysis, by a team of scientists at the World Weather Attribution network, uses data from seven weather stations in Ireland, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Finland. The team were not able to get sufficient data at short notice to include a UK station.
The findings suggest that rising global temperatures have increased the likelihood of such hot temperatures by five times in Denmark, three times in the Netherlands and two times in Ireland.
The sizeable year-to-year fluctuations in summer weather in Scandinavia makes it harder to pin down a specific change in likelihood for the heatwaves in Norway, Sweden and Finland, the researchers say. However, “we can state that, yes, heatwaves have increased – and are increasing – in Scandinavia as in the rest of Europe”, says one of the scientists involved.
America spends over $20bn per year on fossil fuel subsidies. Abolish them
Posted on 30 July 2018 by dana1981
Imagine that instead of taxing cigarettes, America subsidized the tobacco industry in order to make each pack of smokes cheaper.
A report from Oil Change International (OCI) investigated American energy industry subsidies and found that in 2015–2016, the federal government provided $14.7bn per year to the oil, gas, and coal industries, on top of $5.8bn of state-level incentives (globally, the figure is around $500bn). And the report only accounted for production subsides, excluding consumption subsidies (support to consumers to lower the cost of fossil fuel use – another $14.5bn annually) as well as the costs of carbon and other fossil fuel pollutants.
At a time when we need to transition away from fossil fuels as quickly as possible, the federal and state governments are giving the industry tens of billions of dollars to make the production of their dirty, dangerous products more profitable.
We already have to leave tapped fossil fuels in the ground
Crucially, the OCI report noted that if we want to meet the Paris target of limiting global warming to less than 2°C (and we do!), not only does the fossil fuel industry have stop developing new reserves, but “some already-tapped reserves must be retired early.”
Developed fossil fuel reserves vs. remaining carbon budget to meet 2°C and 1.5°C Paris climate targets. Illustration: Oil Change International
This reality is incompatible with continued US government subsidization of fossil fuel industry production, including $2.5bn per year for the exploration of new fossil fuel resources – new resources that simply cannot be developed if we’re to meet the Paris climate target.
2018 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #30
Posted on 29 July 2018 by John Hartz
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Story of the Week...
Extreme global weather is 'the face of climate change' says leading scientist
Exclusive: Prof Michael Mann declares the impacts of global warming are now ‘playing out in real-time’
Emergency workers among damaged vehicles in a open parking area of northern Athens after a flash flood struck the Greek capital. Photograph: Angelos Tzortzinis/AFP/Getty Images
The extreme heatwaves and wildfires wreaking havoc around the globe are “the face of climate change,” one of the world’s leading climate scientists has declared, with the impacts of global warming now “playing out in real time.”
Climate change has long been predicted to increase extreme weather incidents, and scientists are now confident these predictions are coming true. Scientists say the global warming has contributed to the scorching temperatures that have baked the UK and northern Europe for weeks.
The hot spell was made more than twice as likely by climate change, a new analysis found, demonstrating an “unambiguous” link.
Extreme weather has struck across Europe, from the Arctic Circle to Greece, and across the world, from North America to Japan. “This is the face of climate change,” said Prof Michael Mann, at Penn State University, and one the world’s most eminent climate scientists. “We literally would not have seen these extremes in the absence of climate change.”
“The impacts of climate change are no longer subtle,” he told the Guardian. “We are seeing them play out in real time and what is happening this summer is a perfect example of that.”
“We are seeing our predictions come true,” he said. “As a scientist that is reassuring, but as a citizen of planet Earth, it is very distressing to see that as it means we have not taken the necessary action.”
Extreme global weather is 'the face of climate change' says leading scientist by Damian Carrington, Environment, Guardian, July 27, 2018
2018 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #30
Posted on 28 July 2018 by John Hartz
A chronological listing of news articles posted on the Skeptical Science Facebook Page during the past week.
Editor's Pick
How Did the End of the World Become Old News?
The fire this time (in Sweden). Photo: Mats Andersson/AFP/Getty Images
There has been a lot of burning lately. Last week, wildfires broke out in the Arctic Circle, where temperatures reached almost 90 degrees; they are still roiling northern Sweden, 21 of them. And this week, wildfires swept through the Greek seaside, outside Athens, killing at least 80 and hospitalizing almost 200. At one resort, dozens of guests tried to escape the flames by descending a narrow stone staircase into the Aegean, only to be engulfed along the way, dying literally in each other’s arms.
Last July, I wrote a much-talked-over magazine cover story considering the worst-case scenarios for climate change — much talked over, in part, because it was so terrifying, which made some of the scenarios a bit hard to believe. Those worst-case scenarios are still quite unlikely, since they require both that we do nothing to alter our emissions path, which is still arcing upward, and that those unabated emissions bring us to climate outcomes on the far end of what’s possible by 2100.
But, this July, we already seem much farther along on those paths than even the most alarmist climate observers — e.g., me — would have predicted a year ago. In a single week earlier this month, dozens of places around the world were hit with record temperatures in what was, effectively, an unprecedented, planet-encompassing heat wave: from Denver to Burlington to Ottawa; from Glasgow to Shannon to Belfast; from Tbilisi, in Georgia, and Yerevan, in Armenia, to whole swaths of southern Russia. The temperature of one city in Oman, where the daytime highs had reached 122 degrees Fahrenheit, did not drop below 108 all night; in Montreal, Canada, 50 died from the heat. That same week, 30 major wildfires burned in the American West, including one, in California, that grew at the rate of 10,000 football fields each hour, and another, in Colorado, that produced a volcano-like 300-foot eruption of flames, swallowing an entire subdivision and inventing a new term — “fire tsunami” — along the way. On the other side of the planet, biblical rains flooded Japan, where 1.2 million were evacuated from their homes. The following week, the heat struck there, killing dozens. The following week.
How Did the End of the World Become Old News? by David Wallace-Wells, The Daily Intelligencer, New York Magazine. July 26, 2018
Upcoming webinars on turning misinformation into an educational opportunity
Posted on 27 July 2018 by John Cook
Since starting Skeptical Science in 2007, I've been researching how to counter misinformation. One answer is inoculation - you can neutralize misinformation by exposing people to a "weak form of misinformation" (e.g., explain the techniques used to mislead). But how do we put this into practice?
One of the most powerful ways to teach science and counter science denial is in the classroom through misconception-based learning. I've been lucky enough to collaborate with several organizations to provide educational resources using this approach. The Skeptical Science team worked with UQx to develop the online course Making Sense of Climate Science Denial.
Now I'm based in the U.S., I've been lucky enough to collaborate with the National Center for Science Education and the Alliance of Climate Educators to develop a set of lesson plans teaching key facts about climate change while addressing five of the most common climate myths. With Brad Hoge (Director of Teacher Support at NCSE) and teachers from around the country who field-tested the lessons, we'll be presenting a five-part webinar series on how to teach our five lessons.
Each webinar will focus on a single NGSS-aligned lesson plan. You can sign up for free to any or all five to get the full complement of lessons. All participants will receive a certificate that can be used for continuing education units. The webinars will be at 7:00-8:30 pm Eastern Time via Zoom.
Register at https://secure.everyaction.com/EuBowp9HYUmbzuBz8uGZdw2
