Climate Science 101: Five things everyone needs to know
Since 2011, I've structured my teaching on climate change based on these five points (we're also working on a climate change curriculum for university courses based on these):
1. It's warming
2. It's us
3. We're sure
4. It's bad
5. We can fix it
I first made these points into a referenced sign for the People's Climate March in September 2014, with a smaller version for the Stand Up for Science rally at AGU in December 2016, which spread widely on social media and was used in the March for Science, April 2017.
Footnotes from the sign:
1. "Warming of the climate system is unequivocal" IPCC AR5 WG1, 2013
2. "Extremely likely (95%) human influence has been the dominant cause of observed warming since mid 20th C" IPCC WG1 SPM, 2013
3. 928 to 0 scientists convinced (Oreskes, 2004); <3% (Anderegg et al, 2015)
4. Widespread impacts on water, food, energy systems, IPCC WG2 SPM, 2014
5. See kimnicholas.com/we-can-fix-it-world-cafe.html
Source: I first heard these five points articulated by Jon Krosnick at in a lecture at Stanford, and from Susan Hassol. These points are elaborated in a journal article (Krosnick et al., 2006, Climatic Change), and have subsequently been used in further research, e.g., this article by Ding et al. (2011) in Nature Climate Change on scientific certainty and support for climate policy.
1. It's warming
2. It's us
3. We're sure
4. It's bad
5. We can fix it
I first made these points into a referenced sign for the People's Climate March in September 2014, with a smaller version for the Stand Up for Science rally at AGU in December 2016, which spread widely on social media and was used in the March for Science, April 2017.
Footnotes from the sign:
1. "Warming of the climate system is unequivocal" IPCC AR5 WG1, 2013
2. "Extremely likely (95%) human influence has been the dominant cause of observed warming since mid 20th C" IPCC WG1 SPM, 2013
3. 928 to 0 scientists convinced (Oreskes, 2004); <3% (Anderegg et al, 2015)
4. Widespread impacts on water, food, energy systems, IPCC WG2 SPM, 2014
5. See kimnicholas.com/we-can-fix-it-world-cafe.html
Source: I first heard these five points articulated by Jon Krosnick at in a lecture at Stanford, and from Susan Hassol. These points are elaborated in a journal article (Krosnick et al., 2006, Climatic Change), and have subsequently been used in further research, e.g., this article by Ding et al. (2011) in Nature Climate Change on scientific certainty and support for climate policy.
