Best climate resources on the web
The climate blogosphere hasn’t been at its most active this week. So we thought we’d use the opportunity to put down our top six (or seven) most useful climate resources on the web.
The US-based Daily Climate says that it
“works to increase public understanding of climate disruption, including its scope and scale, potential solutions and the political processes that impede or advance them.”
The site aggregates daily news across the political spectrum on climate change “from center right to center left” as well as undertaking its own reporting. It offers a free daily news summary, which is well worth signing up to (here).
Yale e360 Digest/ Science Daily
Want to know what the long-term implications of the Texas drought are? Or why polar dinosaur tracks are important? These are the two best sites we’ve found for accurate, accessible summaries of the latest research papers in climate science. Science Daily provides expanded coverage of scientific press releases, Yale w360 does more in-depth discussions.
It may not be the most exciting read – and as it was produced back in 2007, there’s newer scientific research around. But until they publish their Fifth Assessment in 2014, the IPCC’s ‘AR4’ is still the most authoritative presentation of the scientific consensus on different aspects of climate change and its impacts. The full reports are pretty indigestible, but individual issue-specific web pages are accessible enough. To get the best results, use a Google search of the site, rather than searching on the site itself.
Started by Australian John Cook with the intention of “get[ting] skeptical about global warming scepticism”, Skeptical Science has recently been expanding in scope and profile. It now has a full team of (volunteer) writers and regularly features guest articles from climate scientists. Key pages include links to scientific rebuttals to every skeptic argument you could ever think of, “the 10 indicators of global warming” and the excellent climate graphics.
Climate Progress/ Think Progress
Joe Romm’s US-based liberal blog was recently amalgamated into its parent site, Think Progress. This didn’t signal its demise – Climate Progress continues to blat out the longest and angriest headlines on the climate science blogosphere. Romm is a Washington insider with great connections to scientists and frequently catches the headlines. CP is a compelling (and occasionally sensationalist) view from the heart of the heated US energy and climate debate. Romm’s post on the Royal Society “4 Degrees” special issue journal is a good place to start.
Want to understand climate skeptics better? Read their blogs. Bishop Hill is the main staging post for UK skeptics. It is run by Andrew Montford, author of “The Hockey Stick Illusion” and of the GWPF’s “review of reviews” of the CRU email hack. The site posts nearly all the main recent skeptic talking points, and even if you don’t class yourself as a climate skeptic, it’s a consistently entertaining read with useful coverage of the UK climate policy debate from a right-wing climate skeptic perspective.