The availability of accurate, dependable, concise and clear information on anthropogenic climate change increases every year. This is a shortlist of my favorite sources.
1) Obviously start here at SkepticalScience, which is easily the most informative outlet for straightforward information on global climate change. It is also one of the best science blogs on the web. Download the iphone app to help in those debates with your RedState relatives and read the debunkings of favorite denier "skeptic" arguments, e.g., It's the Sun! and It's Cooling! (sure it is). Most even have basic, intermediate and advanced levels!
2) NOAA recently launched a climate change data portal and published a very useful and comprehensive State of the Climate in 2009 report that is full of frightening graphics. This will be required reading for the students in the climate change course I am coteaching this fall (From the Equator to the Poles: Case Studies in Global Environmental Change).
3) NASA's Global Climate Change site Nice graphics and simple info on key indicators of climate change, causes and lots of links to other helpful and nicely organized sites.
4) NASA's GISS site Why not get your climate change data, briefings and graphics directly from the experts. I use the GISS surface temp. graphics page a lot in part because the figures are updated as new data comes in, as errors get fixed, as data correction techniques improve, etc. You can even plot your own temp. data map, like this one of ocean SST for August 2010.
5) Global Warming Art Professional and clear graphics of climate change data. Very useful.
Source: Global Warming Art
6) RealClimate A highly influential site and key resource run by some of the world's leading atmospheric climate scientists. However, the posts have been somewhat infrequent lately, tend to be very technical and can have a strong inside-baseball flavor with climate change icons like Andrew Revkin and Bill McKibben sometimes stopping by to comment. Still I often go back and read old posts like "Dummies guide to the latest "hockey stick" controversy" and "Michael Crichton's State of Confusion" when I need to catch up on some topic or debate. Articles often garner hundreds of comments, many of which can be at least as insightful as the original post.
7) ClimateShifts Run by myself, Ove Hoegh-Guldberg (director of UQs Global Change Institute and lead coordinating author of the AR5 chapter on impacts of climate change on open oceans), and our currently lost-at-sea mate, Blogger Jez. We generally focus on the impacts of climate change on ocean ecosystems, particularly coral reefs. We also cover a range of other threats like overfishing and pollution and other aspects of marine biology and coral reef science.
8) The Climate Change Collection at the Encyclopedia of Earth The EoE is an amazing resource. This collection includes lots of superb articles, biographies of climate change scientists and the climate literacy handbook.
9) ClimateProgress The "indispensable blog" according to Tom Friedman. Up-to-the-minute coverage of the politics, science and solutions of anthropogenic climate change. I don't think editor and lead blogger Joe Romm ever sleeps. He also has some nice resources on the site including An illustrated guide to the latest climate science.
10) Arctic Sea Ice by popular demand!
That gets us into the more political blogs, mainly written by atmospheric scientists or computer scientists of one flavor or another. They are hugely important and I frequently read them, but they often are pretty technical and can get sidetracked by petty battles with deniers skeptics. That said, they are helping to keep the deniers skeptics in check. Or at least regularly pointing out the fallacies in denier skeptic arguments (though not always as respectfully as is done here at SkepticalScience). So if you're game, start with Deltoid and OpenMind. And if you want to take a glimpse at what passes for rational argument in the climate denial skeptic community, visit their mecca: Watts Up With That?
Have some favorites of your own? Please share (in the comments section)
Posted by John Bruno on Monday, 27 September, 2010
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