The good folk at edX (who host our online course Making Sense of Climate Science Denial) generously organised a Reddit AMA (Ask Me Anything) for me this week. The AMA was scheduled to start at 7 am here in Brisbane. When I woke up at 6 am and loaded the AMA webpage on Reddit, 2000 comments had already been posted! So I gulped down a coffee and in the short time available, belted out as many answers as I could as quickly as possible (while linking to relevant videos from our MOOC). Here are a selection of my answers, grouped into categories:
Ask Me Anything about Climate Science Denial by John Cook
The world is headed into an El Nino event – potentially a big one – which will lift global temperatures and likely exacerbate bushfires and drought in eastern Australia, climate specialists say.
Fairfax Media understands that Australia's Bureau of Meteorology will announce next Tuesday that the El Niño event is all but certain.
World headed for an El Nino and it could be a big one, scientists say by Peter Hannam, Sydney Morning Herald, May 8, 2015
Hat tip to I Heart Climate Scientists
Cutting NASA and the N.S.F.’s climate-science budgets isn’t going to alter the basic realities of climate change. No one needs an advanced degree to understand this. Indeed, the idea that ignoring a problem isn’t going to make it go away is one that kids should grasp by the time they’re six or seven. But ignoring a problem does often make it more difficult to solve. And that, you have to assume, in a perverse way, is the goal here. What we don’t know, we can’t act on.
The G.O.P.’s War on Science Gets Worse by Elizabeth Kobert, The New Yorker, May 6, 2015
Not only are jornalists writing about the Massive Open Online Course (MOOC), Making Sense ofClimate Science Denial, but many are also taking the course. Here's an example.
If you want to defeat climate deniers, the first thing you need to know, without a shadow of a doubt, is that global warming is, in fact, happening.
I already know that — I’d like to think we all do, deep down — but there are people who continue to insist that the data is wrong. That’s why, after a week spent learning why climate deniers insist that human activity isn’t responsible for the rise in global temperatures, the second week of online class at Denial101x was dedicated to understanding how we know what we know: that temperatures are increasing, sea level is rising and glaciers are melting.
And yes, those basic facts remain true even when it’s snowing outside.
Here’s how you school climate deniers: The anti-science movement’s biggest fallacies, debunked by Lindsay Abrams, Salon, May 6, 2015
ClimateState gathers knowledge about the broad spectrum of climate change and helps to increase understanding and awareness about the threat of dangerous (unchecked) climate change. The scope is to encourage the fast paced deployment of solutions, i.e. carbon sequestration with Biochar and taxing CO2.
Hat tip to I Heart Climate Scientists
Quote shortened from:
" "Even if you stabilize the concentration of greenhouse gases, you are still committed to a certain amount of climate change no matter what you do because of the lag in the ocean," said Gerald Meehl, a climate scientist with the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado.
Greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide collect in the atmosphere and are believed to act as a blanket, trapping heat and causing the Earth to warm. To stop this warming, many scientists say humans must reduce the amount of greenhouse gases they emit.
Human activities that make the largest contributions to greenhouse gases include exhaust fumes from automobiles and commercial jets and emissions from power stations and factories.
"The longer you wait to do something, the more climate change you are committed to in the future," Meehl said. "
Posted by John Hartz on Sunday, 10 May, 2015
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