Climate Science: Find Your Own Dang Answers

In my surfing on the internet, and occasionally in personal conversation, I've noticed that some people have strong opinions on climate science despite the fact that they seem to have no familiarity with the subject. Sometimes they think that they have an insight as to why human-induced climate change is bogus--as if their particular insight never occurred to the experts.

The internet is a wonderful tool for accessing information. However, it can also be a confusing world of claims and counter-claims. And it doesn't help that acronyms and unfamiliar words abound. So to assist my fellow non-experts out there, I thought I would list a few resources for getting the mainstream science.

First is the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). This is a scientific body established by the United Nations that reviews and synthesizes the state of climate research every five years. Their last report was in 2007 and consists of three parts:

1. The Physical Science Basis

2. Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability

3. Mitigation of Climate Change

These reports may look kind of scary, but the IPCC has given you some help. Each part has a "Summary for Policymakers" that gives the key points. And guess what? Each paragraph of the summary contains a reference to the full report so that if you want more detail on a particular point you can quickly find it in the full report. In addition, the Physical Science Basics part has a "Frequently Asked Questions" document that is a collection of FAQs that are scattered throughout the report. It's a nice place to start.

Next up is the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP).

The USGCRP began as a presidential initiative in 1989 and was mandated by Congress in the Global Change Research Act of 1990 (P.L. 101-606), which called for "a comprehensive and integrated United States research program which will assist the Nation and the world to understand, assess, predict, and respond to human-induced and natural processes of global change."

The USGCRP consists of representatives from a number of federal science agencies and recently released its 2009 U.S. Climate Impacts Report. This report focuses on the basic science and how climate change is expected to impact the U.S. It also has an Executive Summary; however the section that explains the science, Global Climate Change is pretty readable. If you do nothing else, at least look through the figures and sub-headings.

The 2007 IPCC report obviously does not contain more recent developments, and the next report is not due until 2013. Recently a group of climatologists, some of which were authors of the IPCC report, released an update called The Copenhagen Diagnosis. It is quite readable and addresses common questions in separate boxes that are distributed throughout the document.

Finally, there are various other websites where you can find information. There are the various government agency websites such as NOAA, NASA, EPA, USGS, and so forth. Then there is RealClimate.org, a blog maintained by a number of climate scientists, including some high-profile ones. The magazine New Scientist has put together a feature dealing with common climate myths. And of course there is Wikipedia which, although it must be taken with a grain of salt, usually provides simple but good information. After getting a feel for a topic at Wikipedia you can go to one of the other sources I listed for more authoritative information.

So there you go. The next time you find yourself wondering if we are just experiencing a natural warming period, or if the warming can be explained by the sun, or how scientists could possibly know how much CO2 was in the atmosphere in millennia past, go dig into these sources and find the answer. Do you think a particular climate change claim is exaggerated, or have you heard that climate scientists have ignored a particular issue? Go find the topic in these sources and see how it is handled. Whether you believe the information is up to you, but at least you will have authoritative mainstream information.

Metaphorically speaking, you have the dictionary in front of you. Look up the word for yourself to see how it's spelled and what it means.

Updated Recommendations:

America's Climate Choices - May 2010, the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences released three reports on climate change.

Climate Change: NASA's Eyes on the Earth - a slick website that explains climate change in a clear and simple way.

EPA Endangerment Findings - The Environmental Protection Agency's explanation of why greenhouse gases pose a danger under the Clean Air Act, with responses to public comments.

The Discovery of Global Warming - an online history maintained by the American Institute of Physics.

Video lectures of a college course at the University of Chicago.

Blogs:
Skeptical Science - a great resource for dealing with common misconceptions.
Climate Progress
Anti-Climate Change Extremism in Utah - the blog of BYU geologist Barry Bickmore.
Open Mind

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