Through its influence on atmospheric circulation, [the ozone hole] has helped to shield the Antarctic continent from much of the effect of global warming over the past half century. (Robinson & Erickson, 2014)

That’s not a sentence I expected to read in a scientific paper. Most of us probably don’t think about the ozone hole that much anymore, except maybe to remember to wear a bit more sunscreen if you’re on vacation in Australia. But a new review paper – a really phenomenal paper by Sharon Robinson and David Erickson – lays it all out on the table and drops the mic.

The ozone hole lets in more UV radiation, sure. But this existence of this gaping hole also has a HUGE effect on the climate of the entire Southern Hemisphere, affecting wind circulation, ocean currents, and precipitation. This paper argues that we really haven’t payed enough attention to these seemingly dire climate shifts. For example:

• The ozone hole “tightens the vortex” of westerlies, the band of strong winds that encircles Antarctica – this has a complex effect on climate, effectively cooling East Antarctica but warming the (much-reported on) Antarctic Peninusula by drawing in milder air there.
• A windier Southern Ocean means increased dust inputs into the ocean – and dust contains iron, which is yummy yummy food that promotes big phytoplankton blooms.
• Dust also comes from somewhere – continental sources usually – meaning the ozone hole’s effect on wind has probably been bringing in “Anthropogenic pollution” and potentially transporting non-native species into Antarctica via such long-distance dust trails.
• Water availability has been declining in East Antractica, and wind has further contributed by drying things out – this is leading to lowered growth rates in terrestrial mosses and increasing salinity in Antarctic lakes.
• For the marine environment, increased winds promote upwelling and overturning of water masses in the Southern Ocean. This means that the polar ocean absorbs Carbon Dioxide much more slowly from the atmosphere (“therefore accelerating greenhouse warming”).

These are just some of the most important take home points from my perspective as a marine biologist – there are many more, including climate and food security implications for South America, Africa, New Zealand, and Australia. The paper is an extremely compelling read, if only because:

Changes to wind speeds, water temperatures and ocean overturning likely have [biological] impacts on ocean ecosystems…it could mean that ozone effects on wind patterns are as important to marine food webs as [UV radiation]. (Robinson & Erickson, 2014)

Reference:

Robinson, S. A., & Erickson, D. J. (2014). Not just about sunburn–the ozone hole’s profound effect on climate has significant implications for Southern Hemisphere ecosystems. Global change biology, DOI: 10.1111/gcb.12739

The post The complex wrath of the Ozone hole over Antarctica first appeared on Deep Sea News.

The artist is Zaria Forman, and she’s using the pieces to get people thinking about climate change:

Chasing the Light is an art expedition led by artist Zaria Forman that draws inspiration from breathtaking geography to create equally striking art…The artist says, “My hope is that these drawings bring awareness, and invite viewers to share the urgency in a hopeful and meaningful way. Art can facilitate a deeper understanding of any crisis, helping us find meaning and optimism in shifting landscapes.” As a continuation of her work addressing climate change, Forman is currently in the Maldives for the month. She explains, “As the lowest-lying country in the world, the Maldives will likely be the first nation submerged by rising seas.”

Part of the proceeds from the sale of Forman’s Greenland 2012 drawings go to 350, an organization dedicated to solving the global climate crisis. (See the original article at My Modern Met for more details)

And in case you don’t believe me about these images NOT being photos, here’s proof from the artist:

HT to Perrin Ireland for news about this awesome art!

The post TGIF: This Glacier is NOT a photo first appeared on Deep Sea News.

For your Friday viewing pleasure, a great video of the Dalai Lama’s recent lecture at UC San Diego, where he discusses the need for humanitarian values and universal responsibility in responding to the impacts of climate change on communities and ecosystems. Climate scientists Richard Somerville and Veerabhadran Ramanathan from the Scripps Institute of Oceanography join him onstage for the symposium.

The post TGIF: The Dalai Lama on Climate Change first appeared on Deep Sea News.

Sea Level Rise Is Tied to Prevalence of Homosexuality

Dr. M*

Introduction

Although only two years old and previously unrecognized by the scientific establishment, Global Draining (GD) has now become a widely accepted theory. GD states that sea level is falling not rising (Southern Fried Science, 2010a).  Current rates of GD indicate the entire world’s ocean will be empty by 2026 (Southern Fried Science, 2010a).  Local-scale observation of in situ draining combined with a robust theoretical model firmly place the rate of draining at 40 Gigatons of water per year (Dr. M, 2010).  It has been argued that both one and multiple holes occur in the ocean floor that allow for GD (i.e. the monoclavis versus polyclavis hypotheses via McCay, 2010; Southern Fried Science, 2010b). However, the impacts and causes of GD are not clearly understood.  Despite this, GD is a fundamental tenet of nearly every facet of science and likely correlated with many aspects of biology, economics, sociology, religion, and politics.  For example, GD is likely to lead to massive die offs of sharks and reduce global atmospheric oxygen levels (Shark Diver, 2010).

The GD phenomenon appears to be most severe in the western North Atlantic Ocean with an epicenter somewhere near coastal North Carolina, U.S.A.  Recently it was proposed that the density of homosexuals (i.e. homer-sexuewlls) is directly correlated with sea level height (NC State Legislature 2012).  The hypothesis suggests that increased homosexuals in a locality incur a deity’s wrath, most probably by flooding (Leviticus 18&20 and Genesis 6-9).  Recent legislation in North Carolina banning same-sex marriages (NC State, 2012), driving many homosexuals from the state, leads to an excellent opportunity to test this idea.

Methods

One thousand by ten meter transects were conducted at 531 randomly selected localities throughout North Carolina.  Along transects, each person encountered was asked the question “Are you gay?” and answers were noted.  If answerees responded “No”, the follow up question was asked “Are you sure?” to confirm.  This yielded densities of homosexuals per meter.  Transects were collected annually from 2005-2012.

Post conducting transects, sea level in meters off North Carolina was measured with a ruler and by eye.

Results and Discussion

I found that sea level height has been precipitously declining since 2009 (Fig.1) indicating GD is a recent phenomenon.  The rapid sea level loss in 2010 was noted prior (Southern Fried Science, 2010a) and matches theoretical predictions (Dr. M, 2010).  Sea level decline reached its greatest levels in 2012.

Here I find a strong positive correlation between the density of homosexuals and sea level (Fig. 2).  A recent dramatic decrease in sea level was seen in 2012 and likely reflects anti-homosexual/pro-heterosexual legislation (NC State, 2012).   As God’s preferred wrath for eliminating wickedness is flooding and homosexuality is likely to be wicked (Leviticus 18&20 and Genesis 6-9), this suggest a homosexual GD link.

As this study only provides correlational evidence and not causation, I urge for future work exploring the link between homosexual population density and GD.  One possible insightful research line would involve a sociological case study of God. This would incorporate a survey with questions such as “Do you hate homosexuals?” and “Is flooding your preferred option for wrath?”

However, I do note a reduction in density of homosexuals is not enough to account for the trend of GD.  Recent work has suggested that direct telling the ocean not to increase sea level may halt sea level rise (Southern Fried Science, 2012; Huler 2012; NC State 2012).  To test this, I went to the North Carolina Shore and yelled at the ocean “Who do you think you are? Cut this shit out!” three times a day for two weeks.  Interesting, I found not only a stop of sea level rise but by day eight a significant reduction (Fig. 3).  This suggests that overuse of the direct telling method may actually have negative consequences.

Here, I find that the reduction of the homosexual population and direct telling the ocean to “cut this shit out” have lead to the Global Draining phenomenon in a regional setting.  Future work will need to focus on establishing causality and if trends hold globally.  I also urge the exploration of other hypotheses, e.g. Forget About It (Brasco 2006), Bearded Men (Leviticus 19:27), the Priest’s Daughter is a Whore (Leviticus 21:19).

Acknowledgements

This work was funded by generous support from NC-20, North Carolina Values Commission, Pastor Charles Worley and members of the Providence Road Baptist Church, and this lady who gave me $10.

The post Sea Level Rise Is Tied to Prevalence of Homosexuality first appeared on Deep Sea News.

Hat tip to Climate Adaption, a wonderful source fo climate change related news and thoughts on Tumblr.

The post James Hansen: Why I Must Speak Out About Climate Change first appeared on Deep Sea News.

It was refreshing to hear a government official state her steadfast optimism, and urge scientists in the audience to adopt new tools and approaches. To prevent (and effectively cope with) climate change, the public needs to be engaged. This is a new world we live in. She highlighted the importance of social media in driving a scientific revolution.

After the talk I wanted to talk directly to Jane and ask her about social media and online tools. [Sidenote: Afterwards I had to find an empty room and do a little dance – SQUEEEE!] How can we use these most effectively? What should we be doing as scientists?

She basically had no idea. The online world is so new, so untested, and everyone is sitting in the dark. There are no agency initiatives yet poised to harness the power of the internet. She said scientists should use their personality. By default, this has to start with a bottom-up approach.

If that’s the case, how the hell are we going to pull this off?

Blogs and twitter can be the jumping off point, but changing the culture of ocean science has to be so much more than that.

If you love science–and you’re in a position to make a difference–let’s work together to be the marine Steve Jobs. Scientists are busy, but we will always make time for a cause we believe in. Those of us predisposed to communicate (the Deep-sea News Crew) recognize that we must lead our brethren.

Let’s stay positive, be quirky. Bring in the humor. As Kevin noted on his recent chat with Dr. Kiki, a doom-and-gloom message doesn’t motivate anyone. We shouldn’t potray scientists as old white guy authority figures telling you what to do. I’m not your mother. I’m your neighbor, your friend.

Let’s make scientific videos that go viral. Lets teach people about the science in their *homes* and *everyday lives*. Hydrothermal vents are definitely awesome, your average Joe doesn’t run into tube worms on his commute to work. Let’s make people stakeholders in their local communities–their beaches, their coasts, their salt marshes.

I’m begging you: scientists can’t do this alone. The best science results from collaboration, and the best science communication must follow suit.

To impact society, we must connect some very distant dots. We must bring together scientists, writers, editors, techies, entrepreneurs…the list goes on. At Deep-sea News we’re desperate get everyone thinking about the oceans, but we’re also limited by time and resources. We need help from the right connections. It needs to start NOW. This one’s a game changer.

The post Jane Lubchenco’s message to scientists first appeared on Deep Sea News.

Found this interesting animated gif on Andre Nantel’s G+ stream. He found it with no attribution on Reddit (UPDATE: graph from an excellent post on Skeptical Science). Gernot commented on that stream with a link to a Sydney Morning Herald piece “Rift in Antarctic glacier to create gigantic iceberg” (which is really a news wire from AFP). In it, Michael Studinger, a member of the NASA IceBridge team, is paraphrased as stating that the process is not the result of global warming but is part of a natural cycle of ice calving from the glaciers.

I didn’t know much about the relationship between ice sheet calving and global warming, so I googled it. Ice sheet calving is pretty much a mechanics process – when the front end weight puts too much force on the ice sheet it causes strain and thus fractures at its breaking point. Its like putting a thin piece of wood over the edge of your desk. Push down on the floppy end of it and eventually it cracks and breaks apart, it just depends on how much is hanging off the edge and the force of the downward pushing weight on top; the rest inevitable.

I found another Australian article published today at Independent Media Centre Australia that goes into much more depth and is well-referenced. The author, who goes by “takver”, connects the dots in a way the AFP (Agence France-Presse) doesn’t (or can’t). It’s true that calving is a natural, cyclical process predicted and easily derived from physics. But what is missing from the narrative is the acceleration of the process by warming oceans. Takver writes,

The neighboring Pine Island glacier has been undermined from below by warmer ocean water speeding the melting and discharge of the glacier as a whole. Scientists used a remote controlled submarine in 2009 to study underneath the Pine Island ice shelf and discovered a ridge about half the size of the one anchoring the Thwaites glacier. They estimated the Pine Island glacier detached from this ridge in the 1970s starting the process of ocean water undermining the glacier.

“More warm water from the deep ocean is entering the cavity beneath the ice shelf, and it is warmest where the ice is thickest,” said study’s lead author, Stan Jacobs, an oceanographer at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.

The Pine Island glacier’s ice shelf is now moving 50 percent faster than it was in the early 1990s. Pine Island Glacier is moving into the sea at the rate of 4 kilometers a year — four times faster than the fastest-moving section of Thwaites.

Ice sheets are being undercut by warm water. This was also highlighted in a recent study published in Nature Geoscience. I won’t rehash it here, go read takver’s more in depth and well-referenced article at IMCA. The punch-line is right there in the entire abstract of Jenkins et al. (emphasis added),

Thinning ice in West Antarctica, resulting from acceleration in the flow of outlet glaciers, is at present contributing about 10%of the observed rise in global sea level. Pine Island Glacier in particular has shown nearly continuous acceleration and thinning, throughout the short observational record. The floating ice shelf that forms where the glacier reaches the coast has been thinning rapidly, driven by changes in ocean heat transport beneath it. As a result, the line that separates grounded and floating ice has retreated inland. These events have been postulated as the cause for the inland thinning and acceleration. Here we report evidence gathered by an autonomous underwater vehicle operating beneath the ice shelf that Pine Island Glacier was recently grounded on a transverse ridge in the sea floor. Warm sea water now flows through a widening gap above the submarine ridge, rapidly melting the thick ice of the newly formed upstream half of the ice shelf. The present evolution of Pine Island Glacier is thus part of a longer-term trend that has moved the downstream limit of grounded ice inland by 30 km, into water that is 300 m deeper than over the ridge crest. The pace and ultimate extent of such potentially unstable retreat are central to the debate over the possibility of widespread ice-sheet collapse triggered by climate change.

The last part is important because it links ice-sheet collapse to warmer water temperatures, creating the connection that I was wondering about. Indeed there is a connection between global warming and shelf collapse. It’s an acceleration, which I’ve emphasized from the abstract above. Acceleration is important because it means a positive change over time.

This means that the deteriorating conditions are getting more and more worse each day. Sort of like a chain reaction. Warm water undercuts the ice sheet, melting it from beneath which removes the contact with the seafloor and thus more sheet is overhanging, adding more unsupported weight to the end of that mass. Eventually the strain is too much and the ice sheet snaps. This is what we are watching in real time now at Pine Island.

What does this have to do with an animated gif from some person’s stream I follow Google +? It shows rather nicely how climate change contrarians might see the same data differently from climate scientists. Parsing out the same data in creative, and frankly dishonest, ways lets the contrarian bend the data to fit their agenda. The purpose of accumulating data over time is to see the overall trends from the start of data collection to the most current data point.

Selected comparisons within the data set are meaningless to the original guiding question. To paraphrase my graduate advisor after I spent weeks analyzing the same data every which way possible: you can go on fishing expeditions all you want but the deeper you go the more likely you’ll come up empty-handed. His motto was also Kiss It Simple, Stupid. A rookie mistake is to stray off topic too much from your guiding research questions and try to find hidden meaning in your data. I quickly found out I can spiral quickly downwards into a rabbit hole of madness with multiple comparisons and strange data parsing giving me conflicting or unrealistic interpretations.

I think this is what we are seeing to some extent with contrarians. They have spent untold hour locked away in a cubicle crunching the numbers any possible way to show that there are no real trends in global warming. They have in effect descended into their own rabbit holes of madness trying to disprove an insurmountable glacier of independent evidence in support of warming temperatures and oceans. Unfortunately, their madness takes them to the public stage where they are more adept at confusing people.

The post Confronting Climate Contrarianism III: Data Realism and the Rabbit Hole first appeared on Deep Sea News.

The post Global Warming Science and Denialism first appeared on Deep Sea News.

On this trip I was introduced to Dr. Edmo Campos, an ocean and climate modeler at the University of São Paulo.  Edmo and others of his ilk study how the ocean and atmosphere circulate, whether we can make computer models that accurately reflect these circulation patterns and whether those models have useful power to predict future climate patterns or to explore different scenarios that might arise if we go down different climate trajectories.  Edmo showed me one especially compelling slide (the animated gif below) and opened my eyes to an oceanographic phenomenon that shows just how connected seemingly distant parts of the global climate system can be.  It’s called the Agulhas Leakage and it turns out to be one of the most important drivers of global climate that’s been studied in recent times.

To understand what the Agulhas Leakage is (I’ll call it the Leakage from now on) and what it means, it helps to have a bit of background about how the oceans of the world move, because they are not mammoth static lakes, but a complex network of interconnecting currents (Kevin talked about this in his excellent World Oceans Day piece at Scientific American).  These are what Edmo and others call “rivers within the sea”, criss-crossing streams in the oceans, connecting them all in a giant energy conveyor that moves water warmed by the tropical sun towards the poles along the surface and mixes salts and nutrients down into deeper waters at higher latitudes.  One of the most well-known of these circulation patterns is called AMOC* by oceanographers and includes the Gulf Stream current that is familiar to so many folks who live in North America and Europe.  The Gulf Stream is the current that shoots up the Atlantic coast of the US before arcing across towards the UK, bringing Caribbean warm water to the coasts of western Europe and allowing those countries to have more temperate climates than nations at similar latitudes elsewhere.  There’s more to AMOC though, including giant rotating gyre currents in both the North and South Atlantic, equatorial currents that jet warm water across the ocean basins and the Brazil current that runs southward along the east coast of South America.

Together, the currents that make up AMOC form a really important driver of the climate by redistributing the sun’s energy in the Atlantic, which would otherwise be concentrated between the tropics.  Those waters then warm the overlying air at higher latitudes, creating in large part the local and regional climates we know.  What I learned from Edmo, however, is that AMOC is not a standalone system but is connected to other oceans, and particularly to the Indian Ocean via the Leakage (the warm path) and to the Southern Ocean by the Malvinas Current (the cold path).  Deep in the South Atlantic, the AMOC system butts up against the Great Southern Ocean, which is basically a vast donut of circum-polar cold currents that encircle Antarctica at those southern latitudes where no other land interrupts their ceaseless circumnavigation.  This edge is a pretty sharp boundary that keeps the Atlantic system largely isolated, except right at the tips of South America and South Africa.  From the Flakland Islands, the Malvinas current branches off the circumpolar current and runs up the coast of Patagonia, donating cold water to the AMOC system: the cold path.  Over in South Africa on the other hand, the much warmer and saltier waters of the Indian Ocean run down the east coast in the form of the Agulhas current.  Normally they would make a hard left at the Cape of Good Hope and head back east towards Western Australia.  Consistently though, parts of the current curl around the Cape of Good Hope, spinning off eddies to the west.  These giant rotating whirlpools of warm Indian Ocean water then dance off into the South Atlantic, like curls of smoke off the tip of a long held cigarette, until they become entrained in the northward flow in the South Atlantic branch of AMOC: the warm path.  It is these eddies and this water that constitutes the Agulhas Leakage and connects the Atlantic and Indian Oceans.

Edmo was inspired by the data captured by the figure above and by two studies Biastoch et al that showed that the Leakage and the resulting warm path are a very important contributor to the entire Atlantic system because those eddies hang together pretty well  and they also bring with them a great deal of energy because they are so much warmer than the Atlantic water.  The computer models that these oceanographers developed showed that the energy from the warm path even finds its way into the North Atlantic, only starting to lose juice once you get into the higher northern latitudes, where the influence of the adjacent polar waters take over.  You can see this in the animation, where the cold (blue) Malvinas current in the lower left is rapidly overwhelmed by the warm (red) Agulhas-derived water coming across from the east.  Edmo and his colleagues took things one step further and looked at how these ocean circulation models affected atmospheric climate models.  In other words, how do warm eddies propagating from South Africa affect the long-term weather outlook in Europe and North and South America?  To do this they looked at what would happen if you plugged the Leakage, effectively switching off the warm path from the Indian into the Atlantic, and their results were surprising.

One effect was that the leakage of warm water into the south Atlantic currents was replaced by more of the cold water leaking in from the Southern Ocean via the Malvinas current.  This stronger influence of the cold path had a profound effect on the outcomes of the climate model, including a shift in where the trade winds occur and possible drought (“negative precipitation anomalies”, love that jargon!) in the tropical South Atlantic (Brazil and West Africa).  This is especially important as Brazil has already been proposed to suffer from a dryer climate as a result of continued global warming trends.  Importantly, the influence of the switch from warm path to cold path that results from switching off the Leakage did not stop at the equator but propagated in their model all the way into the North Atlantic, potentially affecting the climates of North America and Europe.

As a result of the recent work on the role of the Leakage in the AMOC system, the influence of these powerful eddies will now have to be considered in models of global ocean and atmosphere circulation.  It shows how important something as seemingly quiet and inconspicuous as an ocean current can be, and just how connected water and air are everywhere in shaping the world’s climate.  You could be sitting right on top of a warm eddy and you would never realize it, yet they are a critical piece of the global climate system.  As we approach COP17/Rio+20 and continue to struggle with the nature and impacts of climate change, an increase in our understanding of the roles of these and all ocean currents in global climate can only help shape better solutions.

*AMOC = Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation

A. Biastoch, C.W. Boning, & J.R.E. Lutjeharms (2008). Agulhas Leakage dynamics affects decadal variability in Atlantic overturning circulation Nature, 456, 489-492 DOI: 10.1038/nature07426

A. Biastoch, C.W. Boning, F.U. Schwarzkopf, & J.R.E. Lutjeharms (2009). Increase in Agulhas leakage due to poleward shift of Southern Hemisphere westerlies Nature, 462, 495-499 DOI: 10.1038/nature08519

Reindert J. Haarsma, Edmo J. D. Campos, Sybren Drijfhout, Wilco Hazeleger, & Camiel Severijns (2009). Impacts of interruption of the Agulhas leakage on the tropical Atlantic in coupled ocean–atmosphere simulations Climate Dynamics DOI: 10.1007/s00382-009-0692-7

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I thought it a good time to lay down a primer on how to talk with a climate skeptic, especially when they’re trying to swindle you.

First, it’s good to know that most skeptic arguments begin with a fact. At best, this fact is taken out of context. At worst, this fact (or data set) is deliberately altered to fit the skeptic’s case. The skeptic will then cling to this fact, hammering home how if this one fact is true, then there is no way the other millions of data points the IPCC used in context and without doctoring them could be true. If they’re a good skeptic, they’ll have 3 or 4 of these facts in their back pocket, and they’ll throw them out at you in succession.

Some of these facts are so good, they are used by skeptics over and over and over again, and there are in fact excellent websites dedicated to putting what truth exists in them back in context. Here are a couple that I have used repeatedly:

• Real Climate-This site is excellent. Written by various scientists at the cutting edge of climate change research, I’ve found it to be generally well-written, and it has all the technical depth you could want.
• Skeptical Science-Also excellent. It is more organized towards skeptic confrontation, with a list of 139 common skeptic arguments and rebuttals to them. Not as in depth, but if you want to throw yourself into the trenches with skeptics, this is probably your go-to resource.
• And i f you happen to be in government, or a member of the media, check out this site. It’s a match-making site between volunteer climate scientists and those with questions.

However, sometimes you’ll meet a skeptic with some really random piece of information that they’ll throw out at you which is not covered in one of these websites. On such territory, even the best climate scientists can sometimes founder because, knowing nothing about the source of the claim, and being a sucker for details (that’s how they became a scientist in the first place, after all) they can’t counter the assertion. Many a scientist has foundered on these rocky shores, and lost in the court of public opinion despite their superior technical training and knowledge.

The lesson I have drawn from this sad, over-played drama is: do as the skeptics do. Have one good argument that is easy to understand. Keep coming back to it. Make the argument such that if it is true, all skeptic arguments must be false. Don’t let the skeptic drag you into details you don’t know, because they are irrelevant. The argument I have come up with is based on three simple questions:

1. Does CO2 trap heat?
2. Is the concentration of CO2 rising?
3. Are we responsible for that rise?

As you may have guessed, the answer to all three arguments is “yes”. Expanding further:

Point 1: We have known that CO2 has trapped heat for over 150 years. We know because John Tyndall (the same guy who figured out why the sky is blue, as it turns out) stuck some CO2 in a box with a thermometer in it, shone some light through it, and found that the temp was higher when there was more CO2. Not exactly rocket science, but NASA still finds it worth putting on the web.

Point 2: Keeling Curve. 52 years of direct measurements of CO2. No models, no proxies, just direct measurements.

Point 3: Turns out, we’ve emitted twice as much CO2 from the burning of fossil fuels as is necessary to account for the rise in CO2. The other half has been absorbed by our friend the ocean, and is causing ocean acidification. The data go back to 1751, and come from fuel production data. You can get the data yourself here. Sabine et al., 2004 in Science has a good and simple breakdown of the sizes of the sources and sinks of CO2 for the last 200 years.

In summary, CO2 traps heat, the concentration of CO2 is rising, and humans have dumped twice as much CO2 into the atmosphere as is necessary to account for that rise. We have a gun, the gun is smoking, and we pulled the trigger.

Stick to this argument, and you can win in the court of public opinion. The court of science ruled long ago, so public opinion is now the only court that matters. You’re not talking with words that put people to sleep immideately like “regional variability”, “Pleistocene”, or “adiabatic lapse rate”. Your talking about words that people understand. “Box”. “Temperature”. “Burn”. “Twice”. The only thing that might get them is “CO2”. But if they can’t stay awake for that, then you’re wasting your time.

The post Scientist In Residence: Danny Richter on Confronting Climate Change Skeptics first appeared on Deep Sea News.