Do you want to know more about climate change?
Read this before emailing me:
I can answer direct questions over email or phone if they are specific to my areas of research as noted on my website. I get a lot of these requests every week from people and students all over the world. So before I answer, it is important for me who you are (your name, location, grade and school, if relevant), your goal, if this email is part of an assignment and who the teacher is that assigned it, and what research you have already done. It takes time for me to write responses in between teaching college students. I will usually get back in 1 week. For basic questions on climate change, there are many resources already written by climate scientists that have what you need:
EPA Student’s Guide to Climate Change , for basic answers to causes of climate change
National Climate Assessment 2018 , for answer to questions on impacts of climate change in the US
Project Drawdown is a great organization focused on evaluating solutions to climate change
Global Weirding with Katherine Hayhoe is an excellent Youtube channel by an expert climate scientist, with lots of episodes on various topics
Common responses to major criticisms of climate change from Skeptical Science
Recent talks by me on Climate Change can be found in my Presentations page
If you are a Wisconsin organization seeking to invite me for a talk, please make that request through the UW Badger Talks Hub
And now for some unfiltered thoughts:
Give Climate Hell
Yes, you should give climate scientists a hard time. They should be honest, ethical, tireless, and above the fray. The ones who haven't should be shunned. But they are scientists, no different than ones trying to cure cancer, discover new planets, or build a faster computer. Most of us are not crooked or clueless. Like you, we also want to protect our way of life.
Here's what we know:
Global warming is real and you know it.
Climates have always changed, but not as fast as right now in the history of humanity.
Humans are the main cause, at least for the past 50 years.
Fossil fuels, like coal, oil, and gas, that emit carbon dioxide and methane, are the culprits.
We figured out how this works over a 150 years ago and all we've been doing since is refining the science and watching multiple lines of evidence mount and verify it.
It sounds daunting.
But you know what?
Climate change can be tackled.
It's what Americans do.
We solved big problems, better than anyone else.
We drastically reduced deadly air pollution.
We beat back the polio epidemic.
We got out of the Great depression and won a world war.
We patched the hole in the ozone layer.
We used common sense, good regulations, and entrepreneurialism.
We should do the same for global warming
We shouldn't rely on the federal government to solve all our problems.
Or China for that matter - because you won't like their solution.
But we also shouldn't let the government bury their collective heads in the sand.
One way or another, our run with fossil fuels will die out.
We shouldn't miss our chance to dominate the next great energy revolution.
So, we should hold our politicians accountable.
For the decisions they make that affect our lives and tell them how we feel about it.
And politicians should stop telling us that we can never be certain enough to act.
It's their duty to make hard choices.
Otherwise, enjoy teaching your grandchildren to canoodle for catfish, run snow machines on mud, plant oak trees instead of northern hardwoods, run air conditioning at your cabin, make Wisconsin look more like Missouri or Kansas.
Look - it's not the end of the world (for most of us).
But it sure won't be the world you grew up in.
Most Americans get this.
Your neighbors want to fix this too, but they might be too scared to say it out loud.