I just ran across a very useful resource over at Skeptical Science. It's a series of one-line responses to over 100 arguments climate change contrarians often use. The current top 5 are displayed above. You can also click on any of the one-liners to get more detailed information (basic, intermediate or advanced). Scientific skepticism is healthy. Scientists should always challenge themselves to expand their knowledge and improve their understanding. Yet this isn't what happens in global warming skepticism. Skeptics vigorously criticise any evidence that supports man-made global warming and yet uncritically embrace any argument, op-ed piece, blog or study that refutes global warming.
So this website gets skeptical about global warming skepticism. Do their arguments have any scientific basis? What does the peer reviewed scientific literature say?
They even have an iPhone/iPad app.
You really should go read the whole blog post about the one-liners, but there's one paragraph that I found particularly interesting:
I finally saw my problem was trying to cram every bit of science into my short answer as possible, in order to make the paragraph bullet proof to any objection. But Jan had the right approach - just "bat the ball back over the net" and get into the nitty gritty afterwards. So I'm immensely grateful for Jan for both providing some immensely useful content and also teaching me a lesson about science communication. (emphasis added)
That's John Cook describing his reaction when he saw how Jan Dash had re-written them into one liners. Look at that highlighted phrase again:
Just "bat the ball over the net" and get into the nitty gritty afterwards.
That's the key. To communicate science, to communicate anything, you have to get your audience's attention. That's not the time for qualifiers and complications. It's the time to get them interested. As Randy Olson would say, "Arouse and fulfill."
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