Climate class stuff

We are now on Lesson 2. A large part of the assignment, besides all of the reading, is to follow two climate blogs for two weeks and write a 500 word minimum summary/critique/comparison of them. I've read quite a few climate blogs in the past, both consensus and denier sites, so this isn't really new to me. It will be an interesting exercise to critically examine how two different blogs treat the subject. I'm deliberately going to pick one denier blog and one non-denier blog. There are such huge differences in some of these sites. Both sides have their sensationalists, but denialist blogs tend to use logical fallacies and willful ignorance a lot more. There have been a few more science-y denialist sites pop up over the last few years, but they still generally resort to rhetoric and bad science to get their word out. My position has always been to learn as much about the subject as I reasonably can and trust the hardcore science to the climate scientists. If you look past all the rhetoric, so far the vast majority of scientists and peer-reviewed papers/studies are getting it more right the longer they study it. Of course there is uncertainty. No credible scientist has claimed otherwise. But inserting one's personal values and biases into a scientific argument is just wrong.

I wonder how long it will take the world to really start doing what we should be doing, no matter what is causing global climate change. We could and should be the world leader in this. Why aren't we setting an example? I could go on and on about oil/energy companies acting like tobacco companies who denied the link between smoking and cancer. I could say something about the contributions that so many of our politicians get from fossil fuel-based companies. But I won't. This is just supposed to be a nice little post about what I'm learning in school. And I am. Learning that is. Even though some of the material is more just a reminder of what I already know, I am learning about things like the characteristics of the atmosphere, solar insolation, and heat/radiation transfer. These are the things I was looking for. I wish I knew more about clouds. But so do most climate scientists.

I got 100% on both my written assignment and the short essay answers quiz. I'm pretty sure I'll end up with a reasonably easy A in this class. I don't think it will intrude too much on the macro class I'll be starting in two weeks.

Goodness! Look how late it is. I need to stop doing this and transition into getting up early over the next two weeks. Good night.