re: #425 Sharmuta

Oh, I’ll plug along.

If you have not done so already, please check out the AIP link (History of Climate Change, by Weart) I put upstream. I have yet to find a better presentation to the layman that has the breadth of that AIP site while not going overboard into too much detail. I believe if you read Weart’s online book you will be far along in getting a feel for the scope of the scientific work involved.

Most of the government agencies involved in science or its applications (e.g., weather forecasting) have troves of information. NOAA and NASA in particular. Yet of course being government sites they are tainted in the eyes of many.

Indeed, many websites get that accusation… see above where someone tried to smear desmogblog. That happens to RealClimate also, though the contributors to that site really are pretty sharp cookies. Many of the sites run by scientists unfortunately fail the outsider-friendly test, as they constantly refer to what might be considered insider information (e.g., references to papers by an author’s name only.)

The for-profit journal publishing industry (e.g., Nature) has entire publications dedicated to climate (or related fields), but again the problem quickly becomes that the layman, even the well educated and interested person, can quickly get lost in the specialists’ jargon.

Both the American Geophysical Society and the European Geophysical Union make videos of key presentations at their annual meetings, which on occasion I’ve linked here.

Here is where the rubber meets the road - how much time are you (or anyone) willing to spend on this issue? Like all scientific specialties, depth of understanding only comes after long investments of time.

If you have some specific questions, I can give you more specific links.