User Friendly Climate Change

To be completely honest I so not like either of the websites. They both have big flaws. The Friends of Science website has gaps in the science that they present. However, “How to talk to a climate skeptic” has its own problems. While I believe that the science behind this site is more credible and holistic, I have no way of knowing. This is partly because I am not a scientist, but even if I were a scientist I would have problems. The website is not set up in a user friendly way. The page is a long list of links to various statements and counter arguments. While it is good that they address a variety of issues, seeing such a list of links is daunting and discouraging. I am not a climate skeptic but when I saw that page I did not want to read what the links had to say. I looked at one or two of the facts to see what they were saying but I was not going to look at more than that because it was too overwhelming. If I could not bring myself to go through the website why would someone that is not particularly interested in the environment take the time to read all those facts?

This is where the Friends of Science website has the advantage, it is user friendly. You can easily look at the graphs and navigate from one topic to the next. However, if someone were to analysis the graphs for themselves instead of simply believing the analysis that was written, major gaps between the analysis and graphs would occur. For example, the website says that the planet is not warming because there is no real change between temperatures between 2001 and 2011, even though CO2 rose during that time. However, if you look at the in its entirety you can see that the high temperatures of the 1980s are the new average temperatures. That means that there has been a change that the website is ignoring. The problem is that climate skeptics or people that not already versed in the subject are not likely to engage in such analysis of the graphs in front of them. If that is true the website is only going to be effective in making them climate skeptics. In order to combat this trend climate change advocates need to make simpler, user friendly website to counter ones like Friends of Science.