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The morning after Back-to-School: Six points to explain climate change

September 8th, 2017 · No Comments

Like 10s of millions of American parents, the month of September brings back to school night. Writ large, mine last night was what you can hope for: with one exception, what appear to be good to excellent teachers; positive statements about ‘the kids’ and atmosphere; and some positive feedback about your child.  Tensions issues related to school funding, concern about how the parents will have to backfill to cover one lousy teacher, and …. but, again, about as good as it gets. Thus, the mindset was ‘high school’ when seeing an OutPostUtopia (Michael Jenkins) tweet this morning sharing a six-step discussion re climate change and severe weather that provides the sort of clarity that any/all who m

A straightforward climate science explanation that any Middle Schooler should understand

anaged to not fail a high school physics class can/should understand.

The discussion to the side summarized:

Sequence of cause & effects:

  1. The carbon-energy economy is increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide.
  2. That increased carbon dioxide is causing atmosphere AND ocean warming (and ocean acidification) globally.
  3. Global warming is driving Arctic sea loss, retreating glaciers, and sea-level rise (warmer => more volume + melting glaciers/Greenland/Antarctica).
  4. Global warming/climate change does not necessarily cause weather events.
  5. Global warming can augment (make more severe) weather events.
  6. Augmented weather events, therefore,
    1. can be a real expression of climate change because
    2. global warming of the atmosphere and oceans has augmented them.

The above is a defensible discussion which lays out a logical case that any with a modicum of education and (critically) an open mind to science can understand and absorb.

Regretfully,Three wise monkeys the US government is controlled by those who best resemble two of the three monkeys: See No Evil, Hear No Evil.  However, they certainly aren’t that third monkey as people like Donald Trump and Scott Pruitt and those dominating the GOP have no hesitation in their willingness to Speak Evil in their climate science denial even as climate catastrophes (“augmented weather events”) literally kill and otherwise threaten Americans “From Sea to Shining Sea”.

 

Tags: science · Science Communication