Comments 1 to 15:

1. iana at 10:19 AM on 9 February, 2011
   This is really a great resource. Thank you!
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2. climatesight at 12:49 PM on 9 February, 2011
   This is a really good tool for public communication...fantastic job. I am wondering if a dynamic online format, similar to your PowerPoint animation idea, would be good. People could go to SkS and take the quiz without having to download anything. I think an online form of the quiz would be fun, and not too hard to code.
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3. ahaynes at 14:39 PM on 9 February, 2011
   I should clarify that the quiz over at the Warming101 post (link) has a lot of Qs different from Baerbel's quiz (though they do overlap). Baerbel's is much more beautiful, with the images...
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4. ahaynes at 15:01 PM on 9 February, 2011
   Also, Michael Tobis has had some good puzzlers, on In It; though I'm not sure how to find them again though. And Yulsman's What are you looking at? "mystery image"
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5. Eric L at 16:12 PM on 9 February, 2011
   This is great. I would note: you mispelled "decade" on page 17. Also, I would have another question introducing the issue of CO2 acidification, as it is not a problem many are aware of and I suspect many would be confused by the question or find it ridiculous. Also, and this is just my feeling, but I think the 350 question is kind of subjective for a quiz to teach people the facts (that isn't to say it's not correct), and also given the following question may give people the impression that the damage is already done and there's not much point in trying to fix it now.
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6. SME at 17:16 PM on 9 February, 2011
   To further help inform people you could try a question of this form: What percentage of its ice was lost by Greenland last year? A) 5% B) 1% C) 0.1% D) 0.01% Answer: 286 Gigatonne or 0.01% of ice was lost by Greenland last year. _____________________ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenland_ice_sheet Total Greenland ice (ice sheet plus glaciers) ~= 2.85 megagigatonnes (2.85 E15 tonnes) 2.86 E9 / 2.85 E15 ~= 0.01% If all ice melt was considered to be land based ice, consequent sealevel rise would have been about 0.7 mm. Not a trivial amount in absolute terms. IF melting from this source continued at this rate for 100 years it would cause about 70mm (almost 3 inches) sea level rise. SME
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   Moderator Response: [Daniel Bailey] A couple of points: 286 Gigatons was the 2009 amount. The corresponding 2010 value was 600 Gigatons. The latest research suggests future Greenland and Antarctic ice losses will be anything but linear, with multiple-meter rises in sea level possible in decadal timescales.
7. BaerbelW at 17:43 PM on 9 February, 2011
   @Eric L Thanks for your feedback (and finding yet another typo!). I'll collect suggestions and will then re-upload the modified files. The quiz originated in connection with a 350.org activity which is why I included a question about 350 ppm. The individual questions are not numbered so any print-outs can obviously select suitable questions and/or re-arrange them as needed. @Daniel Bailey Thanks for the pointer about Greenland ice in 2010! A general "problem" with questions like the one about the Greenland ice is that they are moving targets. Ideally, these types of questions should be updated whenever new data (plus the corresponding graphics!) become available.
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   Moderator Response: [Daniel Bailey] You're very welcome. A graphic expressing the Greenland mass-loss growing quadratically (which it is) would be nice, if achievable. A 3D version of this graph, but showing the loss growing instead of the mass declining, if you will.
8. BillyJoe at 20:19 PM on 9 February, 2011
   I have been interested in climate change for nearly a year now. It seems it's paying off with all correct answers in the quiz :D Thanks to Real Climate and Sceptic Science. :)
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9. Phil at 23:04 PM on 9 February, 2011
   I printed the PDF to put in the Kitchen at my workplace but printing double sided means that the answers are on the front and the questions on the back of the previous page ! I printed out pages 2-25 and then 1 and 26 separately. It would be nice to include the Skeptical Science URL in it too
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10. HumanityRules at 23:41 PM on 9 February, 2011
    Moderator #6 One point. From the graph 2010 seems to start at -700 and end at -1150, that's more like 450 Gigatons. I think what you mean is that 600 Gigatons was lost during the melt season, some weight was put on either side of this period.
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    Moderator Response: [Daniel Bailey] Fair point. Net losses vs peak losses in a noisy time series (thank you for pointing that out). But the system is displaying signs of increasing de-linearity and needs further monitoring.
11. michael sweet at 02:57 AM on 10 February, 2011
    These are terrific slides. I think your point about disguising information as fun especially good. I would change the volcanoes question to: How much more CO2 is due to human activity than volcanoes? I find your wording hard to read. I would change the sea level rise question to emphasize the cost more. $25,000 billion doesn't mean much to me. Perhaps 25-28 Trillion dollars would work. The cost is so phenominal that it is difficult to convey properly.
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12. Bob Lacatena at 05:33 AM on 10 February, 2011
    Some corrections: Slide 11 says "on save side" when I think what was meant was "on the safe side" (unless "save side" is some sort of weird Aussie colloquialism). Slide 13 explains how CO2 drops in spring/summer, but not how it rises so precipitously again in the fall/winter. I think the gap will lead the ignorant to believe that plant CO2 uptake is a mitigating factor (contrary to the clear evidence of the graph). Slide 24... I agree with Michael Sweet. The wording of the question is confusing, and hence the answers are ambiguous. Then unless one looks closely at the words on the answer slide, one can assume that "10 times as much" means that volcanic is 10 times human, rather than vice versa. You might also add a slight emphasizing the actual cost of doing something about it... that economist compute it as 1% of GDP, with worst case ("alarmist") levels of 3% of GDP.
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13. Peter Offenhartz at 06:37 AM on 10 February, 2011
    I agree with SME (#6) in re using percentages. The absolute numbers are meaningful only in the context of the total ice volume. If you are going to use absolute numbers you should also indicate the total world volume of ice (both poles), which is about 33 x 10^6 cubic kilometers. An even more interesting question is how much heat it would take to melt a proportion of the ice (say 0.01%) compared to the world-wide solar radiation over the course of a year...
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14. BaerbelW at 07:12 AM on 10 February, 2011
    Thanks for the feedback! @Sphaerica "save side" on slide 11 was just me not finding another typo (thanks for spotting it) Slide 13 - I'm going to reword the explanation for an updated version of the quiz to make this clearer Slide 24 - I changed the question to Michael Sweet's suggestion (this was somewhat "lost in translation" as I had first created the quiz in German) @Michael Sweet Sea level rise question: I used the numbers as they were shown in the WWF/Allianz-report (I didn't want to get caught in the differences between German and British/US billions) @Phil Sorry about the double-sided printing issue - I can add one more slide as page #2 so that this works better. Thanks for your suggestion to add a link to SkepticalScience - I changed the last slide to do just that. @SME and Peter Offenhartz I see your points about using percentages. On the other hand, they aren't quite as visually intruiging as the graphics of the icecubes currently included. Also, as 0.01% is a very small number it would most likely just cause a reaction of "so what?" which in the case of the Greenland icesheet isn't really warranted. I'll wait until tomorrow in case more suggestions show up in the comments and will then upload modified versions of the PDF- and PPT-files.
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15. michael sweet at 10:47 AM on 10 February, 2011
    Baerbelw: I think the main issue with the sea level problem is that the problem is so huge it is difficult to summarize. I cannot think of anything that really describes the problem well. Your choice is good. Millions, billions, trillions eventually it adds up to real money.
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