A Critical Eye

When reading information regarding almost any topic, one must acquire both sides of the story and weigh these for which is more true. There is much information on the world-wide web about climate change and one must have a critical eye when reading all sides—not simply believing each thing that we read. The Friends of Science non-profit organization clearly does not believe that climate change is a man-made problem. They state “climate always changes without help from man” and that “the sun is the main direct and indirect driver of climate change”. As they use previous data and research, they create claims to support their argument such as CO2 not causing warming but reverse—warming releases CO2 from the ocean, the earth is cooling and violent weather is not getting worse. They are however concerned about the environment and changing polices on pollution. This organization searches for evidence that support their claim in that humans are not the cause of climate change and excess C02 is not the cause. They do not preset counter information so when one views this, they must realize there is much information that is being withheld from them and in return a balanced argument is not presented. Therefore, when I read the articles on the site I was always being skeptical and would have liked to see more evidence and full discussions of issues.  

The section “How to Talk to a Climate Skeptic: Responses to the most common skeptical arguments on global warming” by the non-profit organization Grist presents clearly people’s most common questions of why they are skeptical about global warming and scientific answers to them. They have evidence refuting the claim that CO2 only increases with warming and does not contribute to it. This website clearly is in support of human causation of global warming and seeks to educate the public and especially those skeptical of global warming about the true causes and effects of it. With over 50 claims, one may also not read everything and believe all that we see. I feel that it is necessary to do additional research to gain better understandings of the issues.

Each NGO presents their side of the story of causes of global warming, backing it up with scientific evidence. The Grist website is definitely more interesting to read and is more convincing as it has clear answers to the many questions that global warming skeptics have. Their answers are also backed up by much scientific evidence and direct you to other websites to find out more. Overall I believe these websites provide a good starting point for a person who wants to understand about climate change. After reading sections on both websites, I am encouraged to delve further into the issues and do additional research to form my opinions.

Compare and Contrast

Though both these websites target the believers, non-believers, speculators, and confused people on the topic of climate change, each website addresses it in a different way. The GRIST.org website targets the crowd that is skeptic about climate change and start off by talking about the stages of denial which i found funny. The website is split into four categories: stages of denial, scientific topics, types of arguments, levels of sophistication. I think this website is great for those are skeptic, confused, and or not knowledgeable because within each major topic they have three main points that are broken down even more and the reader is provided a link for each fact that is said as it is elaborated even more beyond the bullet point. This site is also in my opinion targeted to the older and more educated crowd that goes beyond college as it also brings up many past events, historical significance, and political references.

The friends of science website is a lot more simpler. It gives 6 points which portrays there thoughts and opinions as one of the "things you should know about climate change" include how Al Gore was wrong about CO2 and how computer models were proven wrong. In each of the 6 points the site tries to make it leads to another link where each site has a graph that shows the point that there trying to make. To me personally the graph shows a lot of things that can just make the reader confused or not care.

Both these sites i noticed a .org which probably means they are both non profit organizations. They both have lots of scientific references but i think the "How to Talk to a Climate Skeptic" is a better website since it provides a lot more information and has the facts in bullet points. This website has a section for different backgrounds; if i looked at both websites as someone who didn't know anything about climate change it would be easier for me to read GRIST because the facts are listed right there and the entire argument that they want to convince me with are on one page and it is very easy to see. The Friends of Science website has links/tabs that cover other topics but it just seems like climate change was part of the website and not there specific...again looking at it from someone who's looking at the website for the first time. When i see economic, policies, news/events, census etc it turns me away or just dulls the mood.