Skeptical Science website

In my DISCCRS newsletter this week there was a link to this website that addresses the skepticism surrounding global warming. I've spent about half an hour browsing around the site and so far I am thoroughly impressed. Climate change science is multi-disciplinary, complex, constantly changing, and extremely difficult to communicate in a clear, understandable way. But John Cook and contributors do a commendable job at this. Everything they present is carefully explained and referenced with recent, high-impact primary research articles (although many of the links to these references were broken or you'd have to have an account with the journal - and they should have a reference list in addition to these links). It appears to be updated often - it's only April 1, but there were 2010 publications referenced, though it appears they have not yet added the recent study in Geophysical Research Letters that finds that the temperature increase from greenhouse gases will overwhelm the cooling due to a solar minimum (Feulner & Rahmstorf 2010 - this would be appropriate in discussing if we're heading into a new Ice Age).

Here's what it says in the "About" section of the website:

The goal of Skeptical Science is to explain what peer reviewed science has to say about global warming. When you peruse the many arguments of global warming skeptics, a pattern emerges. Skeptic arguments tend to focus on narrow pieces of the puzzle while neglecting the broader picture. For example, focus on Climategate emails neglects the full weight of scientific evidence for man-made global warming. Concentrating on a few growing glaciers ignores the world wide trend of accelerating glacier shrinkage. Claims of global cooling fail to realise the planet as a whole is still accumulating heat. This website presents the broader picture by explaining the peer reviewed scientific literature.

Often, the reason for disbelieving in man-made global warming seem to be political rather than scientific. Eg - "it's all a liberal plot to spread socialism and destroy capitalism". As one person put it, "the cheerleaders for doing something about global warming seem to be largely the cheerleaders for many causes of which I disapprove". However, what is causing global warming is a purely scientific question. Skeptical Science removes the politics from the debate by concentrating solely on the science.

As someone who is terribly passionate about clear, accurate, and effective communication of science, I wholeheartedly endorse this idea of separating the science from the politics, even while realizing that ideally we do need the former to guide the latter.