According to some recent reports (e.g. PlanetArk; The Guardian), the public concern about global warming may be declining. It’s not clear whether this is actually true: a poll conducted by researchers at Stanford suggests otherwise. In any case, the science behind climate change has not changed (also see America’s Climate Choices), but there certainly remains a problem in communicating the science to the public. This makes me think that perhaps a new simple mental picture of the situation is needed. We can look at climate models, and they tell us what we can expect, but it is also useful to have an idea of why increased greenhouse gas concentrations result in higher surface temperatures. The saying “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler” has been attributed to Albert Einstein, which also makes me wonder if we – the scientists – need to reiterate the story of climate change in a different way.

See the RealClimate story

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One of the toughest realities attending debates over what to do, or not do, about the  growing human influence on the climate system is that more science does not necessarily clarify society’s, or individual’s, responses. That is because accumulating observations and analysis pointing to the causes and consequences of global warming merely delineate the problem, including  areas of persistent uncertainty,  uneven exposure to risk and  uneven responsibility for emissions of greenhouse gases. The toughest disputes over interpreting the findings, defining unacceptable danger and creating policies, both domestic and global, to limit risks are not about the science, but about the  values and interests of those involved in or affected by such decisions (or failure to decide, which is also a decision).

See the New York Times blog story

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Targets set by policy makers to slow global warming are too soft to prevent more heatwaves and extreme temperatures in the United States within a few years, with grim consequences for human health and farming, a study warned this week. Although the United States and more than 100 other countries agreed in Copenhagen last year to take action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions "so as to hold the increase in global temperature below two degrees Celsius," a study conducted by Stanford University scientists showed that might not be enough. Stanford earth sciences professor Noel Diffenbaugh and former postdoc fellow Moetasim Ashfaq wrote in the study, published in Geophysical Research Letters, that "constraining global warming to two degrees C above pre-industrial conditions may not be sufficient to avoid dangerous climate change." "In the next 30 years, we could see an increase in heatwaves like the one now occurring in the eastern United States or the kind that swept across Europe in 2003 that caused tens of thousands of fatalities," said Diffenbaugh, lead author of the study.

See the AFP story

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