How to Talk to a Climate Change Denier

Talking to people who deny man-made climate change can be a challenge, but it's necessary. Many people are simply confused by all the rhetoric (something that is intentionally exploited by lobbyists) and are willing to learn under the proper conditions of discussion. Others, of course, have no intention of learning and are, in fact, intent on misinforming. These latter can be ignored for now. Let's focus on how to talk to your relatives, friends, and folks you meet about man-made climate change.

To be honest, there is no right way. Some people will not listen to anything that disrupts their self-selected group talking points. But for others who are willing to have an honest discussion, there are techniques for reaching them.

George Marshall is a climate science communicator and co-founder of COIN, since renamed Climate Outreach (find out more at https://climateoutreach.org). In the following video he presents six strategies for talking to people.

The video is worth watching in full. The six strategies are:

• Common Ground
• Respect
• Hold Your Views
• Personal Journey
• Fits Worldview
• Offer Rewards

Watching the video is necessary to understand each of the six points, but let's parse out a few of them to give you a flavor.

I think Common Ground and Fits Worldview could be the most important, and they are related. Marshall notes that rather than present information from your own point of view, especially if that conflicts with the point of view of the person you're talking to, you should find common ground between the two of you. Find what you do agree on, for example, the welfare of your children, long-term economic stability, or mutual religious beliefs in stewardship. From that common ground you can have a meaningful and respectful discussion that reflects the worldview of the person you are talking to.

Relating your own personal journey to acknowledging the science of man-made climate change can also be helpful according to Marshall. Skeptics will see that you aren't just part of some tree-hugger cult or "liberal" political hack, but someone who has thought deeply and gained knowledge on the subject and, over time, come to understand that man-made climate change is happening and is already having significant effects. Understanding that your journey helped you see the science and its effects on your day-to-day life can lead them to undertake their own personal journey of discovery.

There is much more in the video, so please take the time to watch it. Google "how to talk to climate change denier" and you'll find several other videos offering suggestions on how to reach those who deny climate change (or as Marshall puts it, "climate dissenters").

There are some caveats. Marshall's strategies are focused on in-person conversations, which are likely to be people you know or have recently met. That is different than online "discussions" on Facebook, blogs, and various chat rooms where you may be "talking" to people you've never met and don't even know if they are real or bots or trolls or planted lobbyists working under fake names. Many of these people are intent on disrupting honest conversation. This point is important - rather than waste time arguing with fake Facebook profiles, go out and talk to real people. Talk to your family, your friends, your colleagues, and even people you've just met. Marshall's strategies, e.g., being respectful, only work in the real world, not online.

One last caveat. Don't confuse George Marshall the climate science communicator in the video with the George C. Marshall Institute, which is an infamous lobbying group behind much of the science denial misinformation industry. Do a little research to determine the sources of your information. Check out other posts on this page for more strategies for communicating the science and dealing with climate denialism.

Clarifying Recent Press Coverage Misrepresenting a '1.5 degrees' Paper in Nature Geoscience

The media and anti-science lobbyists have once again grossly misrepresented a scientific study. The authors of that study have issued a statement to clarify:

A number of media reports have asserted that our recent study in Nature Geoscience indicates that global temperatures are not rising as fast as predicted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and hence that action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is no longer urgent.

Both assertions are false.

This sort of misrepresentation is common in the mass media. Lobbyists lie about the study, and the science-deficient reporting staffs of mainstream media focus more on creating sensational headlines than on getting the science right. These misrepresentations - both intentional and unintentional - then get saturated across the blogosphere, thus spreading the false information wider than the original study.

Which is why scientists have to always be sure to keep control of their message.

The authors go on to state that their results confirm the IPCC prediction. When media and blogs claim it doesn't, they are either unintentionally misleading the public or, sadly, outright lying.

Our results are entirely in line with the IPCC’s 2013 prediction that temperatures in the 2020s would be 0.9-1.3 degrees above pre-industrial....

Their study looked at the project CO2 emissions based on the goals set in the recent Paris agreement. They clearly state that to meet that goal "emission reductions would need to begin immediately and reach zero in less than 40 years’ time."

To repeat, to meet the goals set by the Paris agreement, emissions reductions would have to start NOW and emissions would have to be completely eliminated no later than 40 years from now. That's an ambitious goal, and actions to reach it must begin immediately if it is to be accomplished.

...to suggest that this means that measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions are now unnecessary is clearly false.

Indeed, action to reduce - and then eliminate - carbon emissions is required to start immediately.  Those arguing that the study suggests we can sit around and do nothing are at best misrepresenting, and often intentionally lying, about the study. Clearly, we must take substantial action, and take that substantial action now and for decades to come.

This is yet another example of how the media often fails to communicate the science accurately, and how some ideological and lobbying outlets intentionally misrepresent studies. This is why scientists, whether we like it or not, must always be aware of how our science is being communicated - and miscommunicated - by others in the real world.

Tips for Communicating Science to the Public

One of the questions dogging scientists is whether they should speak out about science issues to the public. In the past we've largely stuck to our ivory towers, and been criticized for doing so. On the other hand, scientists have also been criticized for speaking out. Luckily, a recent study shows that the public is more appreciative these days of scientists who choose to talk directly to the public. This is something I've advocated in these pages many times. I've even penned a series of posts on communicating climate science.

Which is why I was happy to come across this article by scientist Marshall Shepherd: 9 Tips for Communicating Science to People Who Are Not Scientists. And of all places, I found it on Forbes magazine's website.

His tips include many I've discussed on these pages:

• Know Your Audience
• Don't Use Jargon
• Get to the Point
• Use Analogies and Metaphors
• Make Three Points
• Remember, You are the Expert
• Use Social Media
• The Myth of "Popularizers"
• Relate

A fellow scientist, writer, and science communicator reminded me this morning that the key to good science communication is brevity. So please read the full article by Marshall Shepherd, 9 Tips for Communicating Science to People Who Are Not Scientists.

Also, check out some additional resources for science communication here.

And let me know if you have any additional tips that we can include in future posts.

How Climate Deniers Saturate Facebook with Fake News

Last week this page talked about how climate denier lobbyists control the message and manipulate public opinion. One of the ways was to take over Facebook pages so that they can promote falsehoods and block accurate science. This post discusses one of the more egregious examples of a page that promotes fake news related to climate.

Facebook allows anyone to set up a Group, and there are many climate change related groups that are worth visiting (see list at bottom of this post for examples). But there are other groups purporting to be about climate change that are really veiled ideological pages to promote lobbyist talking points. These denial-promoting pages can even have a large membership and high activity. There is a reason for that.

I won't promote the page here by naming it but there is one group in particular so embarrassingly denialistic it's hard to imagine why the administrators aren't more adept at hiding that fact. This particular group page provides a good example of what to watch for when judging the veracity of the owners and information.

The administrators are all blatant deniers: Before joining any page on Facebook, or immediately after joining if that is required to view the page, check out the administrators. Go to the Members tab and then the Admins subtab. Look at the Admins' background and watch what they post on the group page. See how they comment on other people's posts. For the exemplar page, the half dozen administrators are all vehement deniers. None is a scientist. One alludes to being a construction worker, part-time disk jockey, and wannabe pool shark. Another admits to being a right wing British political operative. Another is a self-avowed denier of science and possible paid lobbyist, routinely promoting the most ignorant and obvious falsehoods on his own webpage for dummies. Another is a retired guy who posts random anti-climate science gibberish just to antagonize people. At least one Admin has used multiple sock puppets (fake accounts) to engage in personal attacks against those they don't like.

The administrators believe in a global conspiracy of scientists: The Admins routinely dismiss the IPCC, NASA, NOAA, all the world's National Academies of Sciences, all the world's major scientific organizations, virtually every climate scientist on the planet, 100+ years of unequivocal published science, millions of empirical data points, and the well-known basic physics of the greenhouse effect as some sort of "hoax" perpetrated on the global populace. Oddly, the only people who seem to have noticed this "hoax" are fossil fuel and libertarian lobbyists and their spokespeople, plus a bunch of ideological and political hacks who can't seem to understand even the most basic science.

The administrators rely on lobbyist and conspiracy blogs as their sources of "science": While dismissing scientific organizations as "biased" and "fraudulent" and "incompetent" (somehow they can be incompetent and yet simultaneously carry out the world's most intricate fraud ever imagined), the administrators routinely rely on random blogs by non-scientists as the ultimate sources of information. I've seen the Alex Jones InfoWars (a demented conspiracy nutjob blog) cited as a source by Admins. I've seen the Admins cite a satire blog. I've seen them cite the usual round up of lobbyist-fed denier blogs, all of whom have been shown to get it wrong (on purpose) every single time. Yes, Every. Single. Time. So if the Administrators of the page are getting their information from debunked sources and posting many times debunked talking points, then clearly the page is not going to be reliable. Worse, the Admins and their preferred ideological commenters don't seem to ever read their own sources. Every single time they've cited a non-lobbyist source, their own source proves the Admins wrong. Again. Every. Single. Time.

The administrators selectively abuse the posters and commenters: Despite creating the rules of the group professing that "rudeness, threats, excessive profanity, personal insults, or any inflammatory comments" will not be tolerated, the Admins themselves are the ones who routinely engage in profound rudeness, repeated threats, common profanity, egregious personal insults, and constant inflammatory comments. Furthermore, these are directed solely at pro-science, honest, knowledgeable commenters while anti-science, dishonest, and ignorant commenters are encouraged to join the Admins in personally attacking those they dislike. Comments explaining why these latter are wrong, no matter how gently presented, are chastised and commenters berated while the most vehement and vitriolic personal attacks by deniers are met with "I see nothing wrong with how he is treating you."

The administrators harass knowledgeable commenters: In addition to outright abuse, the Admins use other means of harassing commenters. For example, comments are arbitrarily deleted. In one case, a comment and link was deleted by an Admin, claiming "you just linked the same thing twice. I have taken the liberty in deleting your oversight." The links, of course, were not the same, which anyone who had bothered to open them (or even just read the titles) would have seen. Given the constant repetition by anti-science commenters and lack of "taking the liberty" to correct their "oversights," the action was intended entirely as an attempt to intimidate the commenter and show that the Admin had ultimate power to do what he wanted. Admins in that group have arbitrarily and repeatedly removed commenters and posters who proved the Admins wrong, or merely provided accurate science. When the Admins can't handle accurate information (in part because it makes them look foolish and ignorant), then you know the page is actively dishonest.


There are more traits to watch out for when assessing the veracity of a given Facebook page. The key is to watch for sources used, the prevalence of propaganda, and the behavior of the Admins. That particular page was taken over by lobbyist-fed (and perhaps in one case, paid) propagandists, none of whom is a scientist (yet "just know 100 years of science is a lie"). Pro-science Admins were purged. Ideological followers were solicited, especially from the Rupert Murdoch-influenced heavy denier political and lobbying organizations in Australia and New Zealand, to artificially bump up the membership numbers. The actual number of commenters is low, usually the propagandist Admins and their selected ideological attack dogs, plus a few honest and informed people that are willing to put up with the harassment for a while before getting fed up and leaving.

Some of this bullying behavior by Admins is just mental insecurity, an effort to boost their apparently childlike egos. But much of it is intentional deceit to promote falsehoods, either through ideological blindness or intentional propagandizing. It's clear the most active Admins on the page are well loved by the fossil fuel and political lobbyists who count on the willful and unskeptical ignorance of amateur deniers to saturate the blogosphere with their false talking points.

Facebook and similar post-and-comment sites encourage conflict on purpose. Reacting and commenting keep the post "live" in the feed, and people on these pages (both anti- and pro-science) have an amygdala-led propensity to argue. This is why the Admins routinely break their own rules by engaging in abuse, posting multiple antagonistic statements to encourage dissent, and quickly saturating the feed with posts ranging from irrelevant sound bites to photos of their families or backyards whenever an accurate pro-science piece is posted. The goal is suppression of science, promotion of false talking points, and a rather pathetic assertion of the illusion of power.

Luckily, there are climate related Facebook pages that are worth visiting. Of course, each post must still be assessed using critical thinking, but these pages generally provide actual science and keeping out the trolls. Note that some are closed and you must request membership approval.

Climate Change Science

Climate Change Science, Mitigation & Adaptation

Climate Daily News

Indivisible - Climate Change Action

Climate Change: It's Personal

Okay, these are just a few. You can search "climate change" on Facebook and find many more pages, but definitely do some research before joining. Once you're there, poke around to evaluate the Admins, see what kind of people are posting, and take a look at the activity - is it respectful, focused on science, and informational...or is it a hotbed of insults, posts from WUWT and other lobbyist-fed denier sites?

All that said, Facebook is generally not the place you want to be getting informed about science. Its algorithms reward argument and conflict because that has a direct relationship to the profitability of the medium itself. As we saw during the last presidential election in the U.S., the prevalence of fake news on Facebook disinforms more than it informs. This intentional promulgation of disinformation has been fought by climate scientists for many years, so it isn't a shock to any scientist how lobbyists intentionally manipulate public opinion with dishonesty and falsehoods. It is every person's responsibility to become accurately informed before making choices. Facebook can play a role in that, but it shouldn't be the sole source of information. Read the science sites like NASA, NOAA, IPCC, etc. Do your homework.

How Climate Deniers Control the Message

In lobbying, the goal is always to control the message and manipulate public opinion. Climate deniers work hard to control the anti-science message by using the same techniques and tactics used by the tobacco companies to steer public views. As technology has advanced, these lobbyists have adapted to the new media, including Facebook, which now seems to be the main source of (real or fake) news for many people.

Here are some ways the climate denial lobbying industry controls the climate message.

1) Continuously assert a grand conspiracy where the "mainstream media" (i.e., actual journalists) and "alarmists" (i.e., actual climate scientists) and "political people" (i.e., actual honest people) are part of a global, multigenerational conspiracy to promote some sort of "hoax." The goal is to erode public faith in the scientific and peer-review process. If people don't trust the scientists, people will be open to alternative views. Despite the ridiculousness of the conspiracy assertion, lobbyists know it works.

2) Discredit the communication process: This has to happen before the lobbyists can insert an alternative source of information, i.e., their manufactured false talking points. Since these talking points are immediately debunked by scientists and honest media outlets, lobbyists make sure to delegitimize any outlet that provides accurate science and/or debunks deniers' incorrect information. This is why denial lobbyists constantly attack the IPCC; the IPCC periodically puts out definitive reports summarizing the state-of-the-science, so they must be neutralized by the lobbyists. Ditto for why lobbyists constantly - and falsely - claim NASA, NOAA, and every other scientific organization have somehow falsified the data. They haven't, and lobbyists know this, but they must delegitimize all real scientific sources in order to make room for their non-scientific talking points.

3) Feed Falsehoods to the Blogosphere: There is a reason that denier lobbyists fund disinformation sites like CFACT's "Climate Depot" and "WattsUpWithThat," the climate equivalents of "Fox News." Lobbyists know that plenty of ideologues will gladly plagiarize whatever is fed them via these and other paid denier sites and post it without any kind of understanding on their own copy-cat blogs and Facebook pages. Within minutes or hours, any Google search will bring up dozens of these false and plagiarized blog posts. Since most people don't go beyond the first page of any Google search, all that appears to the public are the false talking points, not real science. This is also why the denier lobbying industry promotes every random non-science ideologue who claims to have exposed the grand conspiracy (see #1). Blogosphere saturation in itself is a goal. Lobbyists know that ideologues neither understand nor care that they don't understand. All these ideologues know is that the denier attacks, no matter how ridiculously false, support their preferred narrative. So they unskeptically repeat it.

4) Taking over the "New Media": As suggested above, denier lobbyists have been quick to maximize the power of the "new media," like blogs and Facebook. Unlike traditional journalistic outlets who vetting for truthfulness prior to publication or broadcast, the new media tends to "post now, vet later" as a means of beating the competition to the punch, no matter how false that punch is. Lobbyists love this. They know they can saturate the media with falsehoods and by the time the falseness of those falsehoods is provided in response, the falsehood is ingrained in ideological minds. [Think: A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.] No amount of correct information will ever change the mind of someone who has latched on to the original falsehood because it would mean acknowledging being hoodwinked. People don't like feeling they were played for fools, so to avoid that feeling they simply ignore anything that proves them foolish. It's called willful ignorance, and it's rampant on social media. Again, lobbyists love this. They don't mind manipulating people; it's their business.

5) Taking over Facebook pages: The newest variation on the above is the intentional commandeering of climate-related Facebook pages. This began with ideologues and amateur trolls spewing nonsense and insults all over comment threads, expanded into lobbyist-paid trolls intentionally disrupting these comment threads and posting propaganda, and now includes climate deniers taking over administrative control of the pages themselves. One Facebook page purports to offer a "friendly discussion environment" but is owned and administered by blatantly biased deniers who routinely break their own rules of decorum, allowing denier attacks on scientists while berating anyone who provides accurate science or rebuts their grossly inaccurate propaganda. As "Admins" they cannot be blocked, yet routinely throw anyone debunking them off the page, no matter how polite that rebuttal. In this way they 1) control the message (i.e., intentionally promote denial while intentionally deleting accurate science) and 2) stroking their own fragile egos and mental insecurities.

6) Repetition and KISS: Lobbyists know that too much information gets overwhelming and isn't processed. Keep It Simple, Stupid (KISS) is the watchword of lobbyists. The shorter the soundbite, the more persuasive the message. This is especially true in these days of constant stimulation via instant electronic media. So provide a sound bite (e.g., "Emails!" "Hoax!!!") and repeat it over and over and over and over and over. And then over again. When caught in a lie, repeat the lie even more emphatically. This past election shows how doubling down on falsehoods, a form of gaslighting, means honest people are constantly on the defensive while others repeat known falsehoods as if they are true. Over time the public assumes the falsehood must somehow be true (after all, I keep hearing it, right?). This technique has been used by climate denial lobbyists for a long time, just as it was used by the tobacco denial lobbyists and acid rain denial lobbyists and ozone hole denial lobbyists (who, not surprisingly, are often the very same lobbyists). This is what lobbyists do.

This past election reveals something else of concern. Now that the extreme right wing zealots are in political power, the KKK, neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and general bigots all feel empowered to act out their bigotry more publicly. To them, it's now okay to show their racism freely. Climate deniers find themselves in a similar position of power. Besides clamping down on climate communications by science agencies, the new administration has put several climate deniers in cabinet positions. From these perches they will work hard to "control the message" of denial via abuse of their political positions. This was done before in the Reagan and George W. Bush administrations, both times backfiring on them. Despite their efforts to suppress it, the science doesn't change because political people lie to the public and abuse the public trust. No matter how much climate denier lobbyists in the administration try to ignore the science, the science doesn't go away.

So climate denier lobbyists will continue to try to control the message even as the science becomes more and more unequivocal. The climate is warming and humans are the dominant cause of that warming. That fact is still fact and will remain fact no matter how much lobbyists and political hacks deny it.

It's up to all of us to make sure the facts of climate aren't lost in the intentional denial machine's attempt to suppress that message.

How to Assess Climate Change Through Critical Thinking

To quote Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum in their book, Unscientific America, “[t]he problem with the internet is obvious to anyone who has ever used it; There’s tons of information available, but much of it is crap.” The same is true of Facebook, where pages can be set up on various topics, including Climate Change, and saturated (and administered) by people with no science training and/or who intentionally suppress science and promote denial of that science.

So how does the average person determine what is reliable information on the internet, and what is "crap?" The answer is through critical thinking.

That may sound all elitist and difficult to some, but it really isn't. We use critical thinking every day. When we are sick we call on doctors, not plumbers. When our bathtub is leaking, we call on plumbers, not doctors. Raise your hand if you would ask a trained surgeon to perform the much needed tumor surgery rather than see if your local bartender could cut you open before happy hour gets rolling.

So critical thinking is what we all do dozens of times a day as we decide between running out into traffic or waiting for the walk like at the intersection...or whether to drive our kids to school rather than handing them over to some random stranger who knocks on your front door. We think critically all the time. And yet, when it comes to assessing science we often stop thinking critically. So here is a reminder of how to assess whether what you are reading is science or anti-science.

Is it Science?

Science is both a body of knowledge and a process. Scientists observe what is happening, suggest a possible reason for it based on physical, biological, mathematical, and statistical knowledge, then test that possible reason (which we call a hypothesis) to see if it's true. We then keep testing to try to falsify it, that is, try to prove it wrong. Most scientific studies deal with small, measurable points, science is the sum total of all the relevant studies; any one study is not enough. Eventually you have enough information to call it a theory. Gravity, evolution, and man-made climate change are all called theories; they represent as close as science gets to proven fact.


Does the information come from a science source?

As the opening line to this post notes, you can find tons of information on the internet. But as we saw this past year, there is a lot of fake news and conspiracy junk out there in addition to accurate information. So how do you tell which is which?

For climate change, there are many scientific organizations that study the climate. These alphabet soup of organizations include NASA, NOAA, JMA, WMO, NSIDC, IPCC, UK Met Office, and others. Click on the names for links to their climate-related sites. There are also climate research organizations associated with universities. These are all legitimate scientific sources.

If you have to dismiss all of these scientific organizations to reach your opinion, then you are by definition denying the science. If you have to believe that all of these organizations, and all of the climate scientists around the world, and all of the hundred thousand published research papers, and physics, are all somehow part of a global, multigenerational conspiracy to defraud the people, then you are, again, a denier by definition.

So if you deny all the above scientific organizations there are a lot of un-scientific web sites out there that pretend to be science. Many of these are run by lobbyists (e.g.., Climate Depot, run by a libertarian political lobbyist, CFACT), or supported by lobbyists (e.g., JoannaNova, WUWT, both of whom have received funding and otherwise substantial support by lobbying organizations like the Heartland Institute), or are actually paid by lobbyists to write Op-Eds and other blog posts that intentionally misrepresent the science.

How do you know it's a science source?

In short, follow the credentials. More on that below in "Is the person an expert?"

Is the source accurate?

I wouldn't tell a brain surgeon what the brain looks like or how to do the surgery he has been trained to do. Most of us know how to do whatever we have been trained to do and have practiced through a career in that field, whether it be brain surgery, plumbing, librarian, beekeeping, accounting, or nuclear physics. We rely every day on experts in their fields, just as we expect others to call on us for whatever our particular expertise is. So if you aren't an expert in the field, you either accept the scientific expertise of those who are trained or you become an expert yourself. Note that becoming an expert doesn't mean "googling the internet" for an afternoon, it means going to graduate school and working in the field.

Non-experts, however, can learn the basic principles so they have a greater understanding of the science, thus allowing them to better employ critical thinking to assess the veracity of the source.

Is the person an expert?

The scientific organizations listed above (NASA, NOAA, etc.) only post information from their in-house experts. Other experts are professors at universities. You can determine if someone is an expert by following their credentials.

Michael Mann, for example, has a PhD in physics from Yale University (in addition to 3 Master's degrees and a Bachelor of Arts). He is director of the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University, has worked for many years as a climatologist, and published hundreds of scientific papers. Another expert is James Hansen, who also has a PhD, decades of experience in the field, and hundreds of publications. This is the norm for climate scientists. For legitimate experts you can usually find their credentials online, either at the agency they work for or their university.

In contrast, someone like Ivar Giaever is not an expert in climate science. Giaever was an accomplished scientist in his field - tunneling in superconductors - which has no relevance at all to climate science. He has done no work in the field, has no publications in the field, and in fact admitted to "googling the internet" for a few hours before declaring he was a "skeptic." But even he is an outlier because the vast majority of anti-science sources are not scientists at all. Most are lobbyists or paid front groups or political ideologues with no knowledge of climate science. Again, track back to their credentials, or lack thereof.

But maybe some random person on the internet is right? 

This is a common refrain: "Sure, he has been proven wrong every single time in the past, but maybe he is right this time! You should evaluate the information, not the source!"

The problem with this refrain is that these unreliable sources are always wrong. Every single time. Their information has already been proven false many times. They simply repeat the same talking points over and over and over. Despite what many political ideologues believe, falsehoods don't suddenly become true because you've repeated it enough times. They are still false. Some sources will always - every time - print falsehoods. This is their job; to misrepresent, mislead, and, sometimes, outright lie. Lobbyists have a network of collusion that includes bloggers, media outlets, and paid spokespeople. Their job is to "manufacture doubt," just as the tobacco companies did for decades to suppress the science of smoking causing cancer.

There is no reason for honest people to waste time with sources who have established themselves as either intentionally dishonest or grossly ignorant. There are plenty of legitimate sources out there, and we do ourselves a disservice to hope that someday one of these constantly unreliable sites will stumble upon something accurate. Just ignore them and move on.

But what about blogs?

For most of us the science sources can be overly technical and hard to understand. That's true, though some, like NASA, have attempted to provide pages that get the basic information across without getting bogged down in technical language. Still, most people are going to get their climate science information from blogs or Facebook.

It's important to remember that blogs are not science, though they may help communicate the science to non-scientists. Some blogs are always reliable sources of information while others are always unreliable; how to tell one from the other was described here. Reliable blogs (including those from the scientific agencies as well as some news sites) will generally link back to the actual scientific study or studies being discussed. Don't stop with the blog; always go back to the original study. Be aware that the headline often doesn't reflect the actual content of the article (headlines are written by marketing people trying to be provocative in order to stimulate "hits") and the article often doesn't quite get the science right (again, because more provocative means more hits means more revenue for the author and any advertisers). Read the original paper, or at least the abstract if that is all that is available.

Lobbyist blogs and their front groups (and the unaffiliated but ideological blogs that plagiarize and saturate the blogosphere with the information fed through lobbyists and front groups) will often link back to another front blog rather than the original study. The reason is because these front blogs will "reinterpret" the study results, often drawing conclusions that are exactly opposite of the actual study conclusions. This is done by cherry picking pieces of the study or statements from the study report and then interpreting those pieces as if they were stand-alone. Thus, a paper that unequivocally states the humans are causing climate change might have one sentence of the uncertainties section cherry picked and used to claim the paper says humans have no part in climate change. Yes, lobbyist blogs and their plagiarists do that, and they do it all the time. This is why nothing on those blogs can be trusted. [When someone lies all the time, you can't assume that maybe this one time they accidentally said something true.]

I want to emphasize this point. Legitimate blogs will link to the scientific source and/or published papers. If the blog links to a lobbyist site or one of their front groups (e.g., WUWT, Climate Depot) then you can be assured that the blog is intentionally steering you to the "reinterpretation" of the study, not the actual study conclusions.

The above tips should be employed to ensure you think critically about the sources of information on which you rely. A blog by a comedian/satirist/radio talk show host three steps removed from an actual study they misrepresented is never going to be a reliable source. An Op-Ed in a business blog written by a lawyer paid by a tobacco and fossil fuel lobbying organization with a history of promoting falsehoods is never going to be a reliable source.

Legitimate sources like NASA, NOAA, IPCC, etc. are always going to be reliable. Stick to reliable sources. And ask yourself, do you have to dismiss 100+ years of published science and/or believe in a global, multigenerational conspiracy of the world's climate scientists for more than a decade? If you have to do this to believe something written on a blog, then the blog is not going to be reliable. In fact, the blog is promoting the denial of science.

Here are more ways to critically assess the validity of information you read on the internet.

The Basics of Climate Change Science - The Series

This page started a series of posts on the basics of climate change science and why we know that human activity is causing the climate to warm. To make the information easier to find, this current post creates a running summary and links to all the other posts. Whenever new articles are written they will be added to this central access point. Click on the titles for the full articles.

1. So is it "Global Warming" or "Climate Change?": A guide to some basic terms used by climate change scientists, including clarification of terms that scientists and the public use in different ways.

2. What is the Greenhouse Effect and What Does it Have to Do with Global Warming?: The Earth is kept warm by the natural greenhouse effect. This post describes the basic scientific principles and the history of their discovery, beginning with William Herschel in 1800.

3. So What are Greenhouse Gases and What are NOT Greenhouse Gases?: Most of the warming of the greenhouse effect is caused by a few gases that occur in very small amounts in the atmosphere. The strongest greenhouse gases are water vapor, CO2, methane, and ozone, with CO2 being the main driver of warming.

4. CO2 and Other Radiative Forcings of Global Warming: Impacts on the warming of the climate include forcings and feedbacks. This post explains the basic principles and the main drivers of global warming.

5. Carbon Dioxide (CO2): The Smoking Gun of Climate Change: CO2 is the main driver of  global warming. This post introduces the relationship between CO2 and temperature, and sets the stage for future posts on why we know the CO2 we've added to the climate system is causing our current unprecedented spike in warming.

As noted, this is a continuing series so more posts will be linked as they are written. Feel free to bookmark this post and return periodically to catch any updates you may have missed.

For those interested in more detailed discussions of climate science, follow the links provided in the posts above. For those who like even more details, review the latest IPCC Assessment Report Number 5 (AR5), whose four volumes provide thousands of pages on the science. Start with the Synthesis Report to get a detailed overview, then move to the Physical Science Basis report to dig deeper on the science. The other two reports deal with Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability and Mitigation of Climate Change, important for examining ways we can deal with the unequivocal science.

Carbon Dioxide (CO2) - The Smoking Gun of Climate Change

Carbon dioxide - the smoking gun of global warming! There, I said it. So far in this series we've established that the greenhouse effect is the normal process that keeps our planet within a reasonable temperature range so that we can live here. Now we'll jump ahead a bit and show why we know that it is CO2 from fossil fuels that is causing the rising global temperatures. This will take several posts so to begin with I'll focus on a series of graphs that will clearly show the relationship between CO2 and temperature.

First, a reminder of what has been happening with temperatures since 1880. In this land-ocean temperature index graph it's pretty clear that average global temperatures have been rising.

Now, what has been happening with CO2? Well, we have more than 50 years of very high quality continuous data on CO2 taken at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii. The famous Keeling curve shows that CO2 has been rising steadily during that time. The line line goes up and down because CO2 release is seasonal. This year we passed 400 ppm, a 40% increase over pre-industrial highs.

By the way, if you look at the temperature graph and then the Mauna Loa CO2 graph you'll notice that the relationship isn't linear. In other words, while the CO2 has had a fairly steady and even climb, the temperature tends to go up and down in the short-term because there are important short-term events (e.g., El Nino, La Nina, AO, etc.) or other pollutant impacts (e.g., aerosols), not to mention the occasional volcano, that can either enhance or inhibit the effects of CO2. Anyone who suggests that there is an exact one-for-one linear relationship between CO2 concentration and temperature on a short-term basis clearly doesn't understand the science. In any case, even with the short-term "noise" you can still clearly see the longer-term climb in temperatures along with the CO2.

Okay, continuing on, you can also track back and see how CO2 and two other greenhouse gases have increased dramatically in the last century.

I'll come back and talk about methane and nitrous oxide in future posts, so for now just focus on the carbon dioxide (CO2), the red line in the graph above. So how does the CO2 relate to the temperature. In the graph below you can easily see that temperatures (cool blue to warm red) have increased as CO2 increased (the black line).

The following graph also shows the correlation between increasing CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere and temperatures.

Looking pretty clear, isn't it. And it is pretty clear. As I've discussed in previous posts the dynamics of the greenhouse effect are basic physics, and they were first discovered 200 years ago. Of course, science always will look at new data, and with the incredible growth of technology, use of satellites, ability to measure ice cores and ocean depths, etc., climate scientists from all disciplines have been able to find more and more data, and all of it supports the concept that CO2 is causing an increased warming of the atmosphere.

Okay, this post has hit some of the highlights and tried to show the correlation with graphs. I'll take a closer look at key points in future posts. For now I'll leave you with one more graph. Scientists often get asked how they know it is human activity that is causing the increasing temperatures. The following is just one way we know. Graphs for each part of the world show the same trends.

I'll talk more about this later, so for now just look at the black line and the pink and blue bands in each small graph. The black lines are the observed (measured) temperatures in each geographical region going back to the early 1900s. The blue bands show the results of modeling with just the natural forcings, like those things I talked about in earlier posts. The pink bands show the results of modeling when human activity forcings are added to the calculations. Guess what. The modeling thatincludes human activity match pretty well in all regions to the actual observedtemperatures. The modeling that omits the human component, well, not so much.

 

[This is part of a series of posts explaining the basic science of climate change. More posts will be added weekly.]