I know I have a very basic problem with communicating with other people, especially those that do not accept that climate change is real.  My problem is that I am unsympathetic because have never had the privilege of having had strong disbelief. I have had a good science education from high school onwards, and have read many books on science.

I  do not readily appreciate  what is exactly missing from the anti-science world view, and which parts of the carbon dioxide science story most raise the scepticism bar.   Its fortunate that we have people like Allan Jones and his Gallileo Movement website to let us know how they have found what works to best stir up skeptical anti-science anger. There is no such thing as a sound body of climate skeptic science.  Climate science is attacked without using any evidential or logical proof that is fully consistent with sound existing science.  The Gallileo movement website contains load of poop that could only appear in a peer reviewed science journal in an article about deliberate inducement of  human misunderstanding and psychosis.  Allan Jones rabbits out his daily tirades of poop on Carbon Tax by attacking climate science, which shares the same science used by the broadcasting technology that propagates his voice to duped listeners.    And the professional deniers do work on the scientifically ignorant so very well, so that to some people, what is well established peer reviewed science is made the target of ridicule, as indeed by direct  implication are the scientists who have published it.

I have had the privilege in the past week to watch and learn, as a only a bona-fide member of the longer term income-less and unemployed can, from hours of wonderful free internet content, in the form of videoed lectures, of an entire semester course on Global Warming Science, for non-science majors, given by Prof. David Archer, in geophysical science, at the University of Chicago. He is a real climate scientist, doing teaching and research related to climate science. He is also the author of a few books, one of which “Global Warming Science – Understanding the forecast”, is the textbook for the course.

This course comprises 22 seperate lectures, most are about 40 minutes long, and these have made available online for educational purposes only.  Assumed knowledge is  high school mathematices, relationships and concepts presented in graphs, simple equations, and an appreciation of magnitudes and units of numbers. All concepts are carefully explained in words, with time taken in the traditional lecture format of talking, and putting the main points on a blackboard with a big piece of chalk. The video occasionally switches over to a computer screen, for graphs, pictures and animations. There are also some fun multiple choice questions directed at the students.  Students have individual answer clickers, and get to change their selection, displayed as bar graph totals, in real time. 

Science theory has to be consistant, deep, and predictive. The initial lectures covers the physics of the interactions of atmosphere molecules with light and infrared radiation. To appreciate the results displayed from a simple layer model of the atmosphere, students need to know how the physics of temperature, is based on the movement of atoms, and how it is measured.  They need to know how an ideal “blackbody” behaves in its absorbtion and radiation of different frequencies of light. The interesting result of the model is that a minute concentration of 1 part per million of carbon dioxide are enough to completely saturate and stop a small part of the infra red radiation returning to space. 10 parts per million gets a noticeable greenshouse effect as the blocked band widens. This rubbery molecule widens its band of blockade as its concentration is increased. Rather than being a small effect, it displays widening “band saturation”, and radiates less energy into space.  At sea level there are around 10 with 25 zeros after it in one cubic metre of air.  So even if carbon dioxide is only one part per million, thats still 10 with 19 zeros after it of molecules with the potential to trap radiation.  Now add on the several layers of our atomsphere stretching out 10s of kilometres into space.   Methane is a more powerful greenhouse gas, for the reason that its around in very tiny quantities, so adding a bit more is a powerful relative change.  These sort of findings for me make the dry science lecture style presentation a fascination.

The physics and chemistry used by climate science is was not controversial or even new over half a century ago, and is still being used successfully and accepted without any complaint in other fields, since long before global warming became a public issue.  Now that has been applied to measuring and understanding our climate, suddenly some people think science and its findings are very inconvenient, and therefore totally wrong. These Scrooges of this world, want to heap cries of scorn and humbug apon it. They have had visits from the ghosts of our climate past, our climate present, and our climate future.  We have measured the records of climates past.  We have seen the changes of climate now,  and models predict the future with increasing and frighening accuracy. Still the Scrooges refuse to listen, and do not want part with the smallest part of their wealth, to help the entire biosphere, on which all our lives depend, have a better future, that can include more of us. “Bah humbug!”.

But it does require patience, effort and time to acquire understanding of climate science, and maybe its not so easy to get a skeptic to give more than a curt dismissal, or a Scrooge to invent a thousand reasons why not.

The lectures -
http://geoflop.uchicago.edu/forecast/docs/lectures.html

The simple online atmosphere model -
http://geoflop.uchicago.edu/forecast/docs/Projects/modtran.html

The website of Allan Scrooge Jones.
http://www.galileomovement.com.au/