Please join us. It will be at the West Metro Critical Thinking Club on Saturday, December 28, 2013, at 10:00 AM at the RidgePointe Senior Apartments on 12600 Marion Ln. W, Minnetonka, MN.
I know these people. This will be a tough audience. This is a well educated and thoughtful group. Also, there are many climate skeptics in the group, and a talk given last September that questioned the strength of the evidence for Global Warming was well received. So, this is going to be interesting and fun!
Here's the writeup for the talk, and more info can be found HERE:
The Global and Local Impacts of Climate Change
Anthropogenic climate change, also known as "Global Warming," has emerged as a significant reality affecting societies and economies around the world and at home. In this talk we'll examine the contentious questions of changes in weather patterns and sea level rise. Both of these effects of warming have already had impacts and these impacts are expected to increase in the future. What does the science say about "weather whiplash," severe storms, and the rise of seas in the near and longer term future, how certain are we of what may happen, and how severe might these impacts be?
Greg Laden is a science communicator and teacher who has studied the relationship between human evolution and ecology, climate change during the Holocene, and African and North American prehistory. He has addressed, mostly through his writing on National Geographic Scienceblogs, the science of climate change, and has presented several talks and workshops on this issue. He is currently teaching at Century College and is writing two books, one on fieldwork in the Congo and the other, a novel, on life in the upper Midwest and Plains in a post-climate change world. He strongly hopes that the novel remains fiction rather than prediction. Greg lives with his wife and two children in Coon Rapids, Minnesota.
I'm purposefully not going to address the following things beyond a brief mention:
- Atmospheric CO2 has increased and this increase is because of the burning of fossil fuels by humans.
- This change in the chemistry of the atmosphere has caused the warming of the atmosphere and oceans in accord with expectations from the physical science, and continues apace.
These are facts so well established by science that I don't need to drive across town to tell them to people. Within that second fact is the question of the so-called "Hiatus" and I'll address that briefly but really, it is just a Fox News meme and need not demand the energy and time of this thoughtful group of well educated people.
Sea level, storms, and weird weather, on the other hand, are a different thing. There are aspects of this feature of climate change that climate scientists argue about among themselves, and the there are differences between what the IPCC officially said in its recently released report and what many groups of mainstream climate scientists say. The differences are not deep or huge ... we are not talking about science denialism here. But there is uncertainty and we are approaching new territory. This makes the science interesting, and the potential consequences of climate change make it important.
See you on December 28th, come hell or high water. As it were.
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How did it go. Anyone ask any new questions of were they all the same myths? Anyone learn anything?
Didn't do it yet.
Greg
I don't know which comic book you get your science out of
I don't really read comic books
but the fact is the world has NOT warmed in 15 years,
Yes it has. The idea that the earth is cooling or has not been warming is one of the most common myths about climate change. There is no pause in global warming, but over time different indicators change in how well they track t he change. I use the analogy of estimating the total business carried out in a shopping center by looking only at the number of people who go in and out of one entrance way. See this for more information: About That Global Warming Hiatus. Also, this link has information on recent data indicating that even our little entrance way to the shopping mall has had more people going through it than we've noticed. Here is a link to a blog post on what parts of this climate skeptics get wrong, as well as more information on this latest research.
the arctic ice was 60 percent larger in August of this year than it was last year,
Interesting that you bring that up because I just wrote a blog post on that exact topic: How to not look like an idiot
Antarctic ice is now covering the largest area since satellites started orbiting our planet, the oceans are not rising and polar bear populations have increased 500 percent since the 1960s.
Yes, Antarctic SEA ICE is indeed expanding. This is a result of changes in precipitation in the region that adds fresh water where it contributes to sea ice formation. The Antarctic and Arctic are very different systems in that regard.
Unfortunately, the Antarctic GLACIAL ICE is melting. See this and this.
These are all easily verifiable facts,
Yes, indeed, and you pretty much got it all wrong! That was easy to show, though. Sorry.
but hey, what ever you do don't let the facts stand in the way of your agenda.
Science is my "agenda" so no, the facts and knowledge generally tend to get incorporated in the "agenda."
It is mind boggling that you can post such a blatantly fraudulent story and probably get some brainwashed people to read it and actually believe it!
Fraud is a crime. Are you absolutely certain that you want to tell me that I'm committing a crime here>?
Hoping to wake some Sheeple up!
Say hi to AW for me. Baaa.
JamieFagan
Are you the Jamime Fagan of Wild Alaska Salmon?
Greg
I'll bet you want post my comment.
Oops. Sorry I'm having a bit of trouble reading because my laptop broke and I'm using my ipad mini. Good luck.
Greg, Will the talk be taped or will you make an outline of your presentation available?