Reality.
Reality matters. The basic science has been clear for a long time. The basic consensus that we were doing it to ourselves started coalescing in the 1970's, but people were warning about it decades earlier. In '65, President Johnson's office warned about it. In '53, Gil Plass gave an interview to Time magazine about global warming, written up in March I believe, but it's easy to find: "Gilbert Plass 1953 Time magazine" ... oops, May '53, not March. The basic science is *really* basic, and while the exact details are important, and we don't have all of them yet, the overall picture is quite clear. The IPCC has persistently underestimated the speed at which AGW is changing things. So while reality matters, it only matters to some people. What else is there?
Mindset. Mindset matters more than reality to most people, even when there are major incongruities between what is believed and what is. Politics and religion play on mindset, to get people of particular "temperaments" to agree with what the politician or religion wants, all the time, regardless of the reality of any given situation, or the needs of group members. The general tactic is to play up outrage, usually feigned, against some one or few aspects of a situation, to prevent people from examining the actual evidence for and against. Once people are emotional, the critical reasoning faculty shuts off. This allows the leaders to deliberately confuse the issue, using the classic "Confusion of Categories" to substitute a mindset oriented message to the group that allows members to block off the actuality by having an emotionally more satisfying competing message and also having solidarity with group members. Tough to beat.
Truth. Truth matters. So media matters, because people receive their truths from media. No US major media ever presented the truth about climate, climate science, or consequences. So we are already feeling the effects of AGW, but still almost everyone pretends we aren't, or actually believes we aren't. And that is courtesy of the very structure of the information media. That seems to be what is currently driving the fragmenting of our society. We were always a fractious nation even before we were a nation. And given our size, shape, general structure, we shall stay that way for a long time to come. But media is tailored to mindset these days. People living in FOXworld don't inhabit the same universe as those inhabiting Libland. And that is wrong.
So education matters. We all have to agree to live in the same universe and that it only plays by one set of rules. And that requires a specific sort of education, that emphasizes science basics - what it is, what it does, how it does it, and why it works. Science offers the only hope humans have of a reasonably objective look at the world around us. It's a shame that it will take at least 1 more generation before basic science becomes a basic part of learning, and more than that if some get their way. But we need a "b.s." detector in every person that actually detects basic science, or um ... the lack of it.
It is the details OF the basic science that matters. One of the details is the butterfly effect, meaning you cannot predict any individual weather event, like one cool summer or a single hurricane. Another detail of the basic science is the difference between weather and climate. These are two details of basic science I see ignored or just not understood a lot.
Both, depending on who is talking with whom.
Once upon several years ago, here at Ya Ha Ha Ha Who Answers, there was a fair number of intelligent questions about scientific details. Now they are rarer, and mostly come from alarmed fossil fuel industry duped deniers of science with little clue of either the basics or the details, but an abiding cult-like belief that, by pretending to ask questions about climate science details, they can more readily shovel cut-and-pastes from Wattsup, and thereby singlehandedly preserve Americans' constitutional rights to SUVs and military assault weapons against the dire threats posed by Al Svante Stalin Gore and his Rothscheeld-candy-powered carbon-tax death ray armed time machine, which zaps them from the Hollow Moon.
Most people aren’t particularly interested in global warming, they’re aware of it, they know the basic consequences and they have some idea how it is affecting them. These people are content with just knowing the basics; something that holds true of just about any subject.
When communicating with most people it’s sufficient to cover just the basics and this tends to be the position adopted by the mainstream media.
To be able to engage in a meaningful discourse will require at least some comprehension of the details. Like any subject, the further one goes into it the clearer it becomes and the greater the comprehension.
What I think really matters is that people have access to as much reliable information as they require and are able to educate themselves to their desired level. For some, this will mean that the basics will be adequate, others will need the details.
What matters most when we talk 'global warming' is that we include the entire world in on our pointless discussions of inarguably invalid merit....unless we act upon the condition of 'if global warming'....then we should still welcome the world warmly even if we ready ourselves for a cold climate of calculations of population carrying capacities for devisive regional derivisions. No one ought to judge the discipline by the crafts in the summit's parking lot. Hey...look at this...wooden shoes!
Most scientific journals charge the public a fee for downloading articles. Universities pay large subscriptions to those journals in order to allow their academics access to them.
The point is that most people offering their opinion on the science of global warming haven't paid the journals. They haven't spent thousands and thousands of dollars to download all the pertinent literature. Therefore, my conclusion is that 99.9% of people really don't know what they're talking about (including me!) because they haven't actually read the literature. So, frankly, I really don't care what people think about the science of global warming. Watching people debate that science bores me immensely - sort of like watching children arguing their 'theories' of how santa manages to fit down a chimney.
So, for me, the real issue for the public is how we deal with it. When the public starts to decide what is and is not good science based on nothing more than a gut feeling and selective trawling of the internet, well, that's just idiotic.
Details. Like will it trigger an economic collapse that will destroy western civilization, or will it just make the yuppies migrate to newer beach houses and kill a few million people that no-one important really cares about anyway.
Of course some details don't matter - whether your house floods to a depth of 3 feet or only 2, or whether the grain harvest first fails in 2023 or 2030
I thought the details were what climate science was using?
All I've seen is that "97%" figure and it gets wore out.
Here's what I'd like to see :
1) Global average temperature and what affects it (in detail)
2) Being accurate in depicting past global average temperatures and how they were achieved. (in detail)
3) Knowing what the "actual" Global average temperature is at this point in time without using "preponderances" like anomalies and "actually" connecting the CO2 forcing ("X" amount of degrees) attributable to Global average temperatures (mathematically).
Should be simple after 26 years and a trillion dollars later.
It matters what the person you are talking to believes. With regards to many self proclaimed skeptics in here the basic science is what they need to learn. With scientists and the like the details are what matter.
That it ended 11/28/2012, confirmed after 34 years. Mike
Details, or the basic science?
Just try to help keep your family safe and healthy in the first place. Chemical disposal is very important, teach your kids on this one and they will grow responsible and they will be more inclined to help mother nature as well.
http://toxicwastedisposalact.com
The basic science is the earth is slowly heating up and man is partially responsible. What is interesting is that the earth will warm no matter what we do, it just depend on how fast it will occur.
how to solve global warming is more important.
you mean the global warming that hasn't been happening for the last 15 years, so nothing matters
I would say bolth.
winning.
Can you smell it? Well can you?!
