Climate model success stories

Climate model success stories

5:51 | Climate models have consistently made successful predictions. Here Dana Nuccitelli shows us some examples of successful climate model predictions.

Daily and yearly cycle

Daily and yearly cycle

3:36 | Dana Nuccitelli explains the pattern of contemporary global warming where night warm faster than days and winter warms faster than summers.

Sea Level Rise

Sea Level Rise

4:30 | Keah Schuenemann explains how global warming is causing sea level rise through thermal expansion and melting of land ice.

Flu Shots

Flu Shots

7:54 | John Cook explains the most effective way to debunk misinformation: fight sticky myths with even stickier facts and structure your debunking argument in three parts: fact, then myth, then fallacy.

Sticky Science

Sticky Science

8:00 | Learn about one of the best methods for making your science sticky – the SUCCES method developed by brothers Chip and Dan Heath. We use this method to respond to climate change myths.

Vocal minority

Vocal minority

5:59 | John Cook explains the vocal minority using research from The Six Americas report and from the article, “Your opinion on climate change might not be as common as you think,”

Worldview backfire effect

Worldview backfire effect

9:39 | John Cook explains the wordview backfire effect using examples from recent history and research. He also talks about ways in which we might combat this phenomenon when it comes to discussions of climate change.

Climate is Sensitive

Climate is Sensitive

5:42 | Dana Nuccitelli examines climate sensitivity i.e. the amount of global warming expected from a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide.

Agricultural impacts

Agricultural impacts

2:56 | How could increased CO2 affect our crops? Although CO2 is important to plants, changes in other conditions such as water, nutrients, and pests are likely to mean that more CO2 will not mean better crops.

Polar bears

Polar bears

5:13 | Dana Nuccitelli explains how global warming affects polar bears through its effect on melting sea ice. Different types of sea ice melting mean different impacts.

Adaptation takes time

Adaptation takes time

4:55 | Dana Nuccitelli examines whether species can adapt quickly enough to survive rapid climate change. Five mass extinctions in the Earth’s past indicate there are limits to how much species’ abilities.

Water vapor amplifies warming

Water vapor amplifies warming

5:27 | Keah Schuenemann’s lecture explains how carbon dioxide affects water vapor in our atmosphere and also how the two greenhouse gases interact to form a positive feedback loop.

Extreme weather

Extreme weather

5:38 | Keah Schuenemann explains why global warming makes many types of extreme weather more likely. However, it is virtually impossible to say if a specific storm, heat wave, or other event was caused by global warming.

Ocean acidification

Ocean acidification

11:01 | Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg explains the threat that increased CO2 poses to marine organisms as it dissolves into the ocean.

Heat waves

Heat waves

4:56 | Keah Schuenemann explains why heat waves are happening more often and how those heat waves are impacting our environment.

Overall impacts

Overall impacts

4:46 | Dana Nuccitelli looks at a number of ways that climate change will impact society, and how those impacts worsen with more global warming.

Carbon dioxide is a pollutant

Carbon dioxide is a pollutant

3:10 | A common misunderstanding is thinking that CO2 cannot be a pollutant because CO2 isn’t toxic and it is found naturally in the atmosphere. Sara Green explains that CO2 IS a pollutant because of its effects on the environment.

The Little Ice Age

The Little Ice Age

5:42 | In this lecture, Andy Skuce explains what the so-called “little ice age” was and what caused it. Most importantly, natural factors coming out of the little ice age cannot explain our current global warming.

Confused decline

Confused decline

5:26 | Peter Jacobs explains climate proxies, which estimate temperatures in the Earth’s past. In particular, he looks at the divergence problem, where some tree-ring proxies diverge from recent instrumental measurements.

Future Ice Age

Future Ice Age

4:54 | Dana Nuccitelli looks at what caused ice ages in the past and explains why we don’t expect them to occur in the foreseeable future.

Climate science in the 1970s

Climate science in the 1970s

5:56 | What were climate scientists thinking and publishing in the 1970s, before there was empirical evidence that the globe was warming? Daniel Bedford explains.

Principles that models are built on

Principles that models are built on

4:43 | Dana Nuccitelli explains the principles that climate models are built on: fundamental physical laws. No one can know the future for certain, but these models allow us to make educated decisions looking forward.

Ancient CO2 levels

Ancient CO2 levels

5:48 | Observing the effects of ancient CO2 levels and their correlation to ancient climate change can inform us what to expect today.

The greenhouse effect

The greenhouse effect

4:32 | Mark Richardson takes us to the Reading University Atmospheric Observatory to explain how the greenhouse effect works. He concludes by busting the myth that the greenhouse effect violates the 2nd law of thermodynamics.

Taking up residence

Taking up residence

5:15 | Gavin Cawley explains the carbon cycle, how human activity is causing an increase of CO2 in our atmosphere, and uses bank accounts to show how we can know humans are increasing atmospheric CO2.

Reinforcing feedback

Reinforcing feedback

5:33 | Ice core records tell us global warming causes the ocean to emit more CO2. More atmospheric CO2 in-turn traps more heat, making this is a reinforcing feedback loop.

Measuring from space

Measuring from space

4:24 | Sarah Green explains how satellites monitor outgoing radiation to measure global warming. She concludes by busting the myth that CO2 must be unimportant in our atmosphere because it is only a trace gas.