Questions about Climate Change

[Wayward Son]

Since we've had numerous discussions about climate change/AGW on this board, I thought some of us might be interested in taking the discussion to a broader audience.

FiveThirtyEight is soliciting questions about climate change that it readers would like answered.  The questions must be about climate change and reasonably specific: "In other words, you can ask us to explain a specific metric used to measure changing climate, don’t ask us to prove to you that climate change is real. (Because it is.)"

There's no guarantee that the questions will be answered, of course, but it is a chance to get some of the best "gotcha" questions to a national audience, or a good explanation of why something is or isn't so.

[ScottF]

I'll take a look. Semi-related question: do you think people leave out "anthropomorphic" or "primarily human-caused" before climate change just to save time and keystrokes?

I ask because even the most redneck, science-denying hillbilly would agree that the climate changes. Ergo climate change, of course, is real. I guess making sure to delineate the cause is viewed as too obvious to be necessary?

Regardless, every time I see it phrased like that it feels like a drunk-driving campaign/survey asking people if they agree whether or not cars sometimes smash into each other.

[Crunch]

I'll take a look. Semi-related question: do you think people leave out "anthropomorphic" or "primarily human-caused" before climate change just to save time and keystrokes?

I certainly do. I'm on a mobile device a lot, any savings in typing is embraced.

That being said, I think a lot of people that support AGW may also leave it out so that the obvious natural cycles of climate change remain conflated with the idea that man is causing it.