Thanks for your comment – always appreciated.

I was hoping that my comment of “Don’t preach that scientists have it all figured out and you should now obey our demands… that is not appealing to anyone” would make exactly the point that you are making. I’m certainly not saying that Joe Public is stupid, exactly the opposite – I’m saying keep the messaging simple for the things you have high confidence in like the data from the IPCC that shows both CO2 and global temperature are on the rise. The greenhouse effect is itself quite complicated – I definitely don’t understand all of the nuts and bolts, but the fact that many bright scientists who’ve spent their lives in chemistry, physics, biology, etc have come to agreement that it is a pretty good theory to explain why our world is warm gives me reason to give some confidence to it.

I tried very hard while writing this to not make erroneous statements. For example, I did not say that the observable CO2 rise over the last 60 years was the cause of current temperature rises. What I can say with confidence is that we’ve only been able to accurately measure CO2 since the 1950s and comprehesive global data only exists for about 30 or 40 years. The rest is gathered from air pockets in ice cores, which has its own benefits and drawbacks, but is definitely not as accurate as today’s air measurements.

In the end, statements of the ilk that I described should lead the way:

“we have high confidence in X because of Y”

…and low confidence should (and often is) admitted.

If you have access to good data sets that support humans NOT causing the recent spikes in CO2 or indeed the temperature rises in general, then I would be more than happy to give it publicity. If not, I’d prefer to allow a whole swathe of bright people make their best theories on the data we DO have and for governments to proceed over the coming decades with caution (and indeed action) – the relative risk of the scientists being “right” will not be satisfactorily justified with a glib “we told you so” if the models pan out.

Thanks again for your comments – love getting feedback!

Dave

PS: I understand from the IPCC report that water vapour plays a massive role in comparison to C02, but that polar regions (due to lower water vapour amounts) are at a higher risk with fluctuations in CO2 – thoughts on this?

PPS: Climate scientists – the floor is yours if you want to direct people to additional resources or provide some comments.

The trouble with this simple, dumbed-down approach is that Joe Public now is fully aware that CO2 and Methane naturally rise and fall over time, and that global temperatures also rise and fall over time. And that there is an average 600 year delay between the temperature change and the corresponding co2 change. In other words, temperature rises first, then co2 follows 600 years later. Joe Public understands that CO2 cannot be defined as a cause of temperature change, it is only an effect. Joe Public also knows that water vapour is the 800 lb gorilla of greenhouse gases, co2 is insignificant. So when you speak slowly and clearly to the stupid Joe Public, try to leave out some of these troubling bits.