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Finnjävel at 15:57 PM on 11 May 2016Comparing models to the satellite datasets
Good article.
Though there is one point that needs more effort; comparing model based surface trend with satellite TMT channel trend. Of course the mid troposphere trend is lower than surface trend and TLT trend.
Satellite data nicely proves the greenhouse warming.
Important question is are the model runs direct surface temperature runs, or somehow tweaked to 10km. My guess is that it is just surface data.
So Christy is comparing apples and oranges.
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Tom Curtis at 07:54 AM on 11 May 2016Skeptical Science wins 2016 NCSE Friend of the Planet award
Congratulations to Skeptical Science, and individually to Dana and the two Johns (Abraham and Cook). A very well deserved award.
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scaddenp at 07:15 AM on 11 May 2016CO2 was higher in the past
MA Rodgers. Whoops! I did indeed miss the CO2(e). Good point. On that basis, we would indeed be heading for Miocene-type climate (eventually).
Bozza - based on past climate with assumed similar net forcings. It takes a very long time for icecaps for melt and change in albedo would be very slow till nearly gone.
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Rob Honeycutt at 04:57 AM on 11 May 2016Scientists are figuring out the keys to convincing people about global warming
MA Rogers... And, of course, at that point contrarians will flip completely the other way and say, "Oh yeah? That just means the GHE is saturated." ;-)
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MA Rodger at 23:02 PM on 10 May 2016Scientists are figuring out the keys to convincing people about global warming
Tackling the 400ppm CO2 is so small a quantity, I feel there is another argument that may have traction in the minds of doubters. In normal circumstances it would be true to say "0.04% is so tiny!" but is it really when we talk the atmosphere? That is not a normal circumstance as we are talking tiny tiny molecules and a troposphere 12km thick. (Hopefully I haven't suffered decimal point drift in this below.)
CO2 molecules are today above 400ppm by volume or 607ppm by weight within the atmosphere. As the atmosphere weighs 5.15 million billion tonnes, that means (with an atomic weight of 44), there are 42,800 trillion trillion trillion CO2 molecules up there.
Now, consider the physical size of each CO2 molecule, imagine each molecule presents an area towards the Earth's surface equal to just the size of one of its carbon atoms which are ~70 picometres in diameter (imagine the molecules all stood on their ends with the other two atoms hidden behind the first carbon atom). Given this, and with the globe having an area of 510 million sq km, a photon if considered to be a point object leaving planet Earth by the shortest route (straight up) through an average bit of atmosphere; that photon would have to pass unabsorbed through over 320,000 CO2 molecules to escape into space unhindered.
That suggests the atmosphere contains rather a lot of CO2, not rather a little.
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billhurley at 22:57 PM on 10 May 2016White House: Climate Change Poses Urgent Health Risk
I have heard to that hurricane intensity will increase but the number of hurricanes themselves will not. However, this confuses me. Aren't stronger tropical storms going to result too? Doesn't this mean they become hurricanes and thus increase the number of these storms?
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MA Rodger at 22:47 PM on 10 May 2016CO2 was higher in the past
Ravenken @64.
I feel scaddenp @65/66 is a little quick converting your measure ppm CO2(e) into ppm CO2.
The use of CO2(e) as a measure of climate forcing also has to take on board the anthroprogenic negative forcings which are less well defined but which will (indeed, can only) reduce the CO2(e) figure.
The net forcing equivalent to that during time past when CO2=500ppm is a good start point for considering when the globe would lose the southern ice cap. The northern one is more suseptable to increases in temperature. The IPCC suggest in this SLR graphic that a temperature rise above pre-industrial of ≈1.5ºC would see Greenland melt down. (Mind, the ≈ is a worry.) And as the summit drops to warmer altitudes, it would become a tipping point and irreversable outside a renewed ice age. So if Antarctica is 500ppm, Greenland would be 400ppm.
Of course these are very slow multi-millenia processes. The forcing from methane etc and also the negative forcings are short-lived compared with CO2. And even CO2 will drop over such long time periods. But then melting the very last snow flake on the planet (or just in the NH) is not some target we should be taking as something to avoid. We will be in deep deep do-do far far earlier than the arrival of an ice-free hemisphere or two.
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bozzza at 17:55 PM on 10 May 2016CO2 was higher in the past
@ 54,
What happens to the sensitivity predictions if we include the slow feedback of melting ice sheets?
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bozzza at 17:52 PM on 10 May 2016CO2 was higher in the past
ooh, also how does comment 66 alter things?
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bozzza at 17:50 PM on 10 May 2016CO2 was higher in the past
@ 65
I'm interested in this comment:
500ppm for sufficiently long period of time (1000s of years) is postulated to be enough for it to be more or less ice free at poles, (though Antarctica would likely retain some ice as much higher in altitude than north pole).
How did you come across that idea may i ask?
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bozzza at 17:48 PM on 10 May 2016Consensus on consensus
To further your basic point, Glenn:
Edward DeBono wrote a book called mechanism of mind saying that the mistakes of the system were what made it work. (It's an old book so it might be wrong...!!??!)
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scaddenp at 11:53 AM on 10 May 2016CO2 was higher in the past
Should have checked before commenting. There is evidence of Milankovich cycles operating in Pliocene and moderating the size of the West Antarctica ice sheet. See here. The milankovich forcing seems to have been operating since at least Oligocene (see here) but in the without low CO2, they did not precipatate ice ages. At 500ppm, our climate would likely be similar to the warmer Miocene.
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scaddenp at 11:41 AM on 10 May 2016CO2 was higher in the past
Current CO2 is 400ppm, not 490ppm. 500ppm for sufficiently long period of time (1000s of years) is postulated to be enough for it to be more or less ice free at poles, (though Antarctica would likely retain some ice as much higher in altitude than north pole). Note that in Pleistocene we have ice age cycle driven by Milankovich cycles. In Pliocene, there was no such ice age cycle although the Milankovich cycle was almost certainly present (driven by earth orbital mechanics) and CO2 was around 400ppm and solar input roughly the same.
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Ravenken at 10:12 AM on 10 May 2016CO2 was higher in the past
"Periods of low CO2 coincide with periods of geographically widespread ice ... This leads to the concept of the CO2-ice threshold - the CO2 level required to initiate a glaciation."
Sorry for my ignorance, CO2-ice threshold... my understanding is we are around 490 CO2 equivalent right now... Is the converse of deglaciation the same 'number'? Am I also correct that the current 'number' is 500?
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Rob Honeycutt at 05:23 AM on 10 May 2016Climate Bet for Charity, 2016 Update
Gotcha. Now I get what you're saying.
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pattimer at 03:01 AM on 10 May 2016Climate Bet for Charity, 2016 Update
I am sure you are on a safe bet though :-) -
pattimer at 03:00 AM on 10 May 2016Climate Bet for Charity, 2016 Update
What I mean by that comment is that you would end up with 0.209 after 120 months if the average continued as it has done for the these past years. ( I am not implying that this is what you expect) but it would end up at 0.109 if the remaining years had an anomaly of 0 ( and I am not implying that this is what Kiwi expects) -
Rob Honeycutt at 01:13 AM on 10 May 2016Climate Bet for Charity, 2016 Update
Yes. That's effectively what I've said, that KT's methods are going to end up with the same result in the end. Although, I'm not clear on what you mean when you say, "Your running average is effectively assuming that the remaining months will continue with the same average anomaly and Kiwi's is assuming that the remaining months will have an anomaly of zero."
That's not registering for me somehow.
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pattimer at 00:46 AM on 10 May 2016Climate Bet for Charity, 2016 Update
Rob. It seems to me that both these methods will come to the same when the 120 months are up.....Or am i missing something?Your running average is effectively assuming that the remaining months will continue with the same average anomaly and Kiwi's is assuming that the remaining months will have an anomaly of zero. It is no surprise then when an average of 0.209 over 5 years and 3 months will return a running average of 0.109 if remaining months are assumed zero. When the time is up these assumptions have no bearing on your final answer. -
Christian Moe at 22:37 PM on 8 May 2016Handy resources when facing a firehose of falsehoods
I don't think the factsheet's claim “The IPCC is 20 times more likely to underestimate rather than exaggerate climate impacts” bears scrutiny.
Don’t get me wrong: I’m sure it’s qualitatively true that the IPCC is more likely to be over-conservative, as suggested e.g. in Brysse et al. (2013) (“erring on the side of least drama”), supported by examples e.g. in Rahmstorf et al. (2007), and practically guaranteed by the IPCC process. :-)
But “20 times” smacks of spurious quantification; at least I'm not aware of a study actually evaluating a representative sample of IPCC statements to reach such a conclusion. Apparently the source is Freudenburg and Muselli (2010), herafter FM10, discussed in the basic rebuttal to “IPCC is alarmist”. They do have a “20 times” finding, but it’s not an evaluation of IPCC findings, and doesn’t support the stated conclusion. FM10 purposely avoided drawing on the IPCC. What they did was to scan newspaper stories about new science, not evaluate the science. The most you can say, based on FM10, is that even newspapers overemphasizing scientific disagreement over climate change were much more likely to report new science as saying climate change was ’worse than expected’ than the opposite. But this may tell us more about journalistic norms for ’newsworthiness’ than about tendencies in the science, let alone the IPCC.
To the extent FM10 think otherwise (they’re not very clear), the analysis is flawed. For one thing, it falls prey to ’single-study syndrome’, since each newspaper story would likely report one new dramatic study, whereas the IPCC considers all the evidence. For another, if journalists think a good story involves ’conflict’, ’balance’ and ’danger’, these journalistic norms could well lead them to represent the science as both contested and worse than expected at the same time. Neither representation should be taken as representing the true state of the science.
However, FM10’s premise is that the newspapers’ ’worse-than-expected’ framings do reflect the tendency of the science, and even reflect it conservatively, because the papers (including WaPo and NYT) have been shown to be biased against the consensus, and so would be expected to report that the consensus view is alarmist. But when their own findings overwhelmingly contradict this assumption, does that actually confirm that the science just turned too massively gloomy for the newspapers to ignore despite their assumed bias, or does it simply mean the assumption was wrong? Anyway, their authority for this bias is Boykoff and Boykoff’s “Balance as bias” (2004), which mainly shows that the newspapers in question framed the causes of climate change (anthropogenic or natural) as still in dispute, and doesn’t really go into whether they framed the magnitude or impacts as exaggerated.
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Christian Moe at 21:49 PM on 8 May 2016Handy resources when facing a firehose of falsehoods
OK, here are some suggestions on the Fact-Myth-Fallacy sheet. I'll start out constructive. :-)
The ocean acidification myth just argues by assertion OA "isn’t serious", which hardly merits rebuttal, but the fallacy addresses the specific myth/misunderstanding that the oceans cannot be acidifying because they’ll never become acid. I suggest that this specific claim should feature as the myth text too, otherwise this part doesn’t make sense.
There are two "models are unreliable" myths; one of these is juxtaposed with the fact that "models are based on fundamental physical principles", which is true for GCMs (though not for, say, statistical models), but doesn’t actually address reliability. I’d suggest formulating the myth here along the lines that "models aren’t reality, scientific evidence comes only from observing nature". Anoher possibility would be to merge the two myths into one.
The fact about the West Antarctic ice sheet is juxtaposed with a myth and a fallacy about Antarctic sea ice. The fallacy text fails to dispel the ice sheet/sea ice confusion exploited by deniers. It offers an accurate but weak retort that the sea-ice claim is oversimplified. Instead, it ought to call out the sea-ice argument as a red herring irrelevant to the discussion of ice-sheet mass loss and sea-level rise.
The replies to the "CO2 lagging temperature" myth are fine, but it would be good to have space to add that the present CO2 rise is entirely due to our emissions, since deniers exploit the confusion between the ice-age relationship and the modern CO2 rise to claim the latter comes from the ocean.
"Climate change is having negative impacts on all parts of society." Does this unqualified statement hold, already, everywhere? It’s good to fight cherry-picking, but it’s also fallacious to conclude from a poor cherry harvest that every individual cherry is doing badly. One alternative would be to follow AR5: "In recent decades, changes in climate have caused impacts on natural and human systems on all continents and across the oceans" (WG2 SPM). (Both statements obscure the climate justice aspect that impacts will disproportionately harm the poor.)
"Risks from extreme weather are increasing… some forms … more confidently linked to global warming than others." Should that be "some risks" or something? Some forms of extreme weather (cold extremes) are decreasing, as expected.
I have one further objection, but it'll take a little space so I'll put it in another comment.
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BBHY at 19:15 PM on 8 May 2016CO2 is just a trace gas
Coincidently, clouds are about 0.04% water. I've noticed quite a difference between sunny and cloudy days.
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BBHY at 19:08 PM on 8 May 2016Handy resources when facing a firehose of falsehoods
"...they had a bachelors in meteorology and math and a masters in physics"
I usually respond to that sort of argument that the molecules of CO2 don't care about your college degrees. Your opinions about liberals, taxes, Al Gore, scientists and the government mean nothing to the molecules of CO2. They just go on merrily about their business, absorbing infrared heat energy, and they are quite good at it.
The more molecules of CO2 we put into the atmosphere, the more infrared heat energy gets absorbed and the more the Earth warms up. That's really what happens regardless of how you feel about it.
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Glenn Tamblyn at 16:07 PM on 8 May 2016Consensus on consensus
William.
There is actually an evidence base for why consensus messaging is an important part of communication. It is evidence from psychology. Your argument has a basic assumption. That we are all rational, all of the time, and thus arguing the evidence about climate will work.
When in reality, most of us most of the time are actually rather irrational. We use mental short-cuts, heuristics, quick gut-reactions, and all sorts of ways of forming a view of some sort with least effort. And we strongly filter what we hear based on our inner world-view, our value system, our fears and hopes. Difficult external knowledge can have a hard time sinking in when it conflicts with our prior ideas. And our minds are very good at doing all sorts of tricks and cognitive biases.
So 'Just the facts Ma'am, just the facts' doesn't work so well when it is competing agaisnt our inner monologue.
One important aspect of our biase-addled minds is that we follow the herd, want to fit in, want to be accepted by those around us. So we often tend to think what others think; it feels safer.
This is the power of consensus messaging. It is saying to people, 'its alright, everyone else thinks this too'. So long as the scientific consensus is soundly based - which it is - there actually is no problem, and good reasons for using consensus messaging. -
chriskoz at 08:13 AM on 8 May 2016Consensus on consensus
william@1,
In case you've missed the point of this "consensus on consensus" study: it does not argue that consensus is the evidence of AGW (as your comment incorrectly implies). It does provide the statistical evidence that 97% consensus on AGW among climate scientists is not an outlier.
You're correct that such study does not prove AGW. But you're incorrect that such study is useless. The study provides evidence to the wide public - i.e. those who rely of expert opinion because they are incapable or unwilling to spend time and effort to shape their own oipinion - that expert climate scientists publish solid & accurate knowledge. That every eveidence indicates climate expert opinions should be acknowledged as much (if not more than) the opinions of other science experts, like e.g. astronomers. Any "news" of conspiracy theories among climate scientists dissiminated dniers are pure. often evil falshood.
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BBHY at 03:58 AM on 8 May 2016Consensus on consensus
Personally, I find the evidence very convincing, but there are lots of different kinds of people and not all of them are swayed by evidence. Numbers and physics just turns some people off. The consensus is a way to reach those people. We need to bring as many people as possible on board to solve this problem.
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Tom Curtis at 10:56 AM on 7 May 2016Scientists are figuring out the keys to convincing people about global warming
Johnboy @13, indeed. Afterall, it is a core denier argument that:
1) Increasing the CO2 concentration by 0.016% of the atmosphere is too small a change to have any conceivable effect; but that
2) Decreasing the CO2 concentration of the atmosphere by 0.014% of the atmosphere would be completely devestating, preventing photosynthesis and thereby killing all multicellular life on Earth;
and that
3) Increasing the CO2 concentration by 0.016% of the atmosphere significantly increases plant growth and is necessary to feed a hungry world.
Of course, it is necessary to being a 'rational' denier that you never mention point (1) in the same blog post as you mention points (2) and (3). It is necessary that they be believed at different times so that there is no fear of contradiction /sarc
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Tom Curtis at 10:47 AM on 7 May 2016Scientists are figuring out the keys to convincing people about global warming
nigelj @12:
"One educational tool could be a decent graphic of temperatures over the last 2000 years, with CO2 concentrations overlaid over this, like a double hockey stick."
It is not as directly educational as you might think. The reason is that the heightened temperatures from 1000-1200 and the reduced temperatues from 1400-1750 were respectively due to reduced and increased volcanic activity, not to the small changes in CO2 concentration over those periods.
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Tom Curtis at 10:22 AM on 7 May 2016Scientists are figuring out the keys to convincing people about global warming
nigelj @12, the best, because easiest to understand, analogy of the increase in CO2 concentration for those who claim low ppmv impacts are too small to have any effect is this one:
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Johnboy at 09:20 AM on 7 May 2016Scientists are figuring out the keys to convincing people about global warming
With Nigelj too. CO2 constitutes a minuscule percentage of the atmosphere, yet keeps planet earth from being an ice ball and supplies all the plants and trees on earth with whats needed for life as we know it to exist.
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nigelj at 08:56 AM on 7 May 2016Scientists are figuring out the keys to convincing people about global warming
Some people can't understand how such small quantities of CO2 could change the climate. An anaolgy is how incredibly small doping agents in semiconductors (or transistors) can make these things amplify large currents.
Catalysts in chemistry also use very small quantities of certain chemicals to enable large reactions to take place.
One educational tool could be a decent graphic of temperatures over the last 2000 years, with CO2 concentrations overlaid over this, like a double hockey stick. A picture paints 1000 words. I have seen lots of separate graphs of these things, but not one combined.
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william5331 at 05:16 AM on 7 May 2016Consensus on consensus
And yet, as has been pointed out by climate sceptics and scientists, Consensis has very little to do with science. Evidence does and the evidence is pretty overwhelming that the climate is changeing and we are resposible. Perhaps we should leave this argument alone and just argue on the evidence.
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FrankShann at 01:55 AM on 7 May 2016Peabody coal's contrarian scientist witnesses lose their court case
A very useful table, thank you. So it is easier to read, please could the writing be in black, and the backgrounds made less dense so they are very pale green, orange and blue .
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mark bofill at 01:30 AM on 7 May 2016Deep sea microbes may be key to oceans’ climate change feedback
Interesting article, thanks.
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Johnboy at 01:23 AM on 7 May 2016Scientists are figuring out the keys to convincing people about global warming
Another tidbit for the general public, particularly folks who can't fathom the idea that human activity could possibly effect the climate of the entire planet. From a couple of websites, determined that the amount of carbon that has been extracted or chopped down and burned since the industrial revolution is roughly equivalent to the total amount of carbon currently remaining in ALL of earth's forests combined, around 600B tons.
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Christian Moe at 19:58 PM on 6 May 2016Handy resources when facing a firehose of falsehoods
The Fact-Myth-Fallacy overview is a great resource. Kudos for all the work that must have gone into adhering to the F-M-F template while condensing the arguments to something that folds neatly into my pocket.
When you limit yourself to bite-size statements, pedants can quibble endlessly. I'll try not to.
But I would argue that one or two statements are untenable ("IPCC 20 times more likely to underestimate"), a couple of facts or fallacies fail to connect with the myth they're supposed to rebut (e.g. ocean acidification), and one or two others fail to dispel confusions that deniers exploit (e.g. WAIS/sea ice). And I think there's space on the "We're causing global warming" page to add a fact on the consensus!
Is this thread a good place to offer constructive criticisms? And would it serve any purpose, i.e., is there a prospect that you'll be revising this resource anytime soon?
Moderator Response:Constructive criticism is very welcome (we'll even take destructive criticism but constructive is much more preferred :-). This thread is also a good place for your comments.
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bozzza at 19:30 PM on 6 May 2016Scientists are figuring out the keys to convincing people about global warming
The other thing I might say: is that Arnold Schwarzenegger is famous for saying that, "...the people lead:Governments follow!"
Who are we and why did we have kids?
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bozzza at 19:28 PM on 6 May 2016Scientists are figuring out the keys to convincing people about global warming
Go Johnboy,
The existence of a movie by Al Gore is a key even if it was lampooned for being factually untrue: I have not the expertise to really say one way or the other.
But the fact it exists is great as most movies promote a resourcefully wasteful mode of being: some call it the witches wand of Hollywood!
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denisaf at 12:10 PM on 6 May 2016Scientists are figuring out the keys to convincing people about global warming
Adopting measures to moderate and adopt to the irreversible rapid climate disruption and ocean acidification that is under way would be helped by employing terms that really clarify the situation. It is technical systems that use the fossil fuels that are the main contributors to this deleterious natual process. People only make decisions about the use of these technical systems. These systems exist so the best that can be done is for people to make decisions to close them down as rapidly as is reasonably possible while adopting measures to cope with the consequences, such as sea level rise.
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Daniel Bailey at 09:14 AM on 6 May 2016Handy resources when facing a firehose of falsehoods
"they had a bachelors in meteorology and math and a masters in physics"
Sure they do. SURE they do.
[-but in reality-]
The above fallacy is detailed, here.
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knox kp at 06:13 AM on 6 May 2016Scientists are figuring out the keys to convincing people about global warming
This is terrific and I think people's attitude does change when they discover that the science behind it is something a high-school grad can easily grasp - the link to how global warming works is a very good illustration of just that
On my university radio show I like to repeat the number 36 Billion Tons - because that's annually how much CO2 is spewed - I believe that number may even be a little low for last year - and of course, how could 36 Billion Tons of anything put into a system (climate) not have an effect?
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Johnboy at 02:22 AM on 6 May 2016Scientists are figuring out the keys to convincing people about global warming
I'm with bozzza. Need more information in sources the general public sees. I'm no expert, not even close, but read this blog and the other sources, including the denialist's sites. Without going overboard and being careful to preempt the traps of "it's been warm before"and "the temperature data is phony" for consumption by the average American in news stories, in print (where us seniors still get a lot of our information, pand TV, documentary programs like NOVA. More, thought provoking information on changing animal migration habits, growing seasons, droughts, frequency of record temperatures, and (at least to me) the increase in frequency and intensity of violent weather, Ft McMurray fire, melting ice and glaciers, including Glacier NP, geared to the average citizen.
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funglestrumpet at 01:47 AM on 6 May 2016Scientists are figuring out the keys to convincing people about global warming
As far as I can make out, time is not on our side. Indeed according to some scientists it is already too late and we might as well 'eat, drink, laugh and be merry' etc. Before I join them I would like to see those who have done their darndest to do harm to our species punished for their behaviour.
As background for public consumption, how about a weekly feature that shows progress towards known tipping points - in ascending order of importance and showing ramifications if crossed? (I guess the clathrate/methane situation would be at the top.)
We could have a Kickstarter campaign to fund litigation against those who can be legitimately accused of abusing their position of influence on the issue of climate change.
It would be unusual for the scietific community to take such action and should draw attention to the message that action is essential and long overdue.
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RickG at 01:02 AM on 6 May 2016Handy resources when facing a firehose of falsehoods
@ Digby Scorgie & chriskoz
I did not respond back due to his last comment "its only a theory or idea." That pretty much suggested to me that his "said" credentials were false, not to mention his WUWT link and not addressing my direct question asking if he had sourced the actual published paper he was trashing, which BTW was the Cook et al, 2015 Consensus paper.
I appreciate your comments and suggestions, I think I'll go back and address the specific fallacy to see what response I get back. I also like the idea of asking what evidence he would need to see in order to accept global warming. Thank you both for your input.
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peter7723 at 22:38 PM on 5 May 2016Scientists are figuring out the keys to convincing people about global warming
Here are my three sentences to start the ball rolling:
_WE_ are the polluters.
_WE_ contribute CO2 to Global Warming when we drive our cars and use energy generated from fossil fuels.
_WE_ must reduce energy use and go for renewable energy generation.
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Digby Scorgie at 20:16 PM on 5 May 2016Handy resources when facing a firehose of falsehoods
RickG @2
It's too late to tell your friend that he's been caught for a sucker by the psycopaths of the fossil-fuel industry. However, I'm curious to know what he would consider as "proper" evidence of global warming. In other words, if in his eyes global warming were really to occur, what would he expect to see happening around the world? I speculated on this elsewhere at this site, but was told I'd get nowhere. What do you think?
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nigelj at 13:17 PM on 5 May 2016Scientists are figuring out the keys to convincing people about global warming
The article above talks a lot of sense. This got me pondering about the scientific theory of evolution, and when it was first introduced. There was a lot of scepticism from various groups, especially religious groups.
The theory of evolution was also difficult to grasp if you didn't know much science. More importantly is it required visualising many small compounding changes over big time scales. Even now some people are still sceptical that this could lead to something like the human eye or ear.
See the obvious parallels with climate change denial?
In time more people will grasp climate change and its causes, and will put their ideological biases aside. But lets face facts, some people will never be persuaded, just as with evolution.
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bozzza at 12:14 PM on 5 May 2016Scientists are figuring out the keys to convincing people about global warming
The key is getting the multi year sea ice figures on the front page !
I say we all utilise the YouTube comments section !!
Problem solved!!!
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chriskoz at 08:33 AM on 5 May 2016Handy resources when facing a firehose of falsehoods
RickG@2,I know it's time consuming but did you try the debunking recepe from Cook, Lewandowsky (2011) (on the right margin) to your denier:
- start with the heading about the fact, followed by explanation of the fact,
- then a short mention of the myth,
- then explain the fallacy involved.
Last point is simple in your case, even without the details. The logical falacy of latest argument by your denier is argumentation from authority. Obviously a false authority, because a practicing meteorologist is not an expert in climate sicence.
Don't leave the denier without the response, because s/he be under impression of winning the argument which reinforces a false belief. Respond honestly with "You're wrong on it but will respond with details later" if you don't have time or patience anymore.
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LarryM at 04:31 AM on 5 May 2016Scientists are figuring out the keys to convincing people about global warming
The Shi et al. study may have finally gotten to the root points that need to be communicated to and understood by the average person/voter for them to appreciate the need for serious action on climate change. What we need now are specific sentence(s) that can be repeated ad nauseum until finally they are heard by the average person for the first time.
I'd like to propose that SkS run a contest to solicit the most effective 1-, 2-, and 3-sentence standard message intended to get the whole picture across in a relatively simple and clear soundbite aimed at the average (or better yet, below-average) person. Maybe some social scientist(s) would be interested in evaluating the submissions (who knows, there might be a paper or two in it!).
My pet peeve about point #1 is that the human cause is usually stated as, "Climate change is caused by human activities". This has got to be about the dumbest and least effective sentence possible. If you're already in the know, then you know this mainly means burning fossil fuels, but also things like land use changes and agricultural practices. If you're not in the know, like most people, this is a say-nothing sentence (WHAT human activities?). It would be much better to be less all-encompassing or general in unstated inference and just communicate the most important cause: "Climate change is mainly caused by humans burning fossil fuels for energy, which puts heat-trapping carbon dioxide in the air". Many people don't get the connection between "human activities" and "carbon dioxide", and therefore balk at the need for a "carbon tax".
Note that the above sentence covers both points 1 and 2, and point 3 could be brought in like this: "Almost every climate expert in the world agrees that climate change is mainly caused by humans burning fossil fuels for energy, which puts heat-trapping carbon dioxide in the air." Many people may not totally get "fossil fuels", so maybe it would be better to say "coal, oil, and natural gas".
So, back to the proposed communication contest. It would be a great way to engage the brains of some smart people to revamp the soundbite background for discussing the climate crisis. The 1-, 2-, and 3-sentence idea is inspired by the 3-level SkS climate myth rebuttals. The time to do this is definitely now, in advance of the general election campaign and debates in the U.S., where hopefully climate change will be a more prominent topic than in past elections.
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