Understanding climate change and environmental sciences is a huge task, it involves figuring
out chemisty, social dynamics, biology, meterology, a whole bunch of other ‘oloies. But just
because the topic is so large and complex, doesn't mean that finding resources to answer
your questions should be.
Inspired by this tweet from Katharine Hayhoe, a climate scientist who also happens to have
her own youtube channel called Global Weirding, I thought I’d share my go-to climate change
resources.
T L D W? All the links are going to be down below.
Okay, number one is NOAA's Climate at a Glance. It lets you plot how much the climate has
changed over time in any area - I’d highly recommend checking out for where you specifically
live. And once you’re there check out the ‘societal influences’ tab which lists
the indicators of climate change on society.
I wouldn’t call it fun, but it is worth a good reminder that climate change doesn't
just mean getting warmer.
The climate.nasa home page is a agreat resources for figuring out what is going on in the global
climate at any given time.
It shows a rotating carousel with climate indicators like: the carbon dioxide in the
atmosphere, how much the global temperature has increased from 1880, the arctic ice minimum,
land ice and sea level rise. And if you’re curious about how each one of those is important,
they all expand and unfurl to reveal more information.
And now some non-governmental ones, because well.... just in case.
Columbia's Climate and Life Center, and beyond Columbia this is kind of a catch-all plug
for any University's Earth Science or Climate Science webpages. Chances are if you lurk
on it long enough you'll find student research or blog posts from professors or op-eds from
other scientists or videos of recent field work. Which can really help you inform what
is going on in climate science research right now.
If you really enjoy going in the weeds about environmental policy or the history of law,
I have to recommend the Environmental Law Institute.
It's a members-based group but a lot of it isn't behind the paywall. You can watch these
seminars and read posts without having to pay anything.
I'm really excited about their summer series this year which is going to break down the
Clean Air and Water Acts as well as tackle a few other big moments in enviornmental law
history.
Climate Feedback dot org is really cool. I only became aware of it a little while ago,
but I'm already, you know, a huge fan.
It's a website that fact checks climate stories in the news and public discourse.
This site is really neat actually. They mark up articles and give scientific feedback in
a fairly easy to digest way.
And it isn't just dragging the sites that get it entirely wrong all the time. They also
look at the sites that get it, mostly right or almost all the way right, but maybe they
just over-represented a certain part of the study that we don't know as much about.
It makes it really clear what we do know, what we don't know, what we're trying to figure
out still and what your big take-aways should be.
Which is great because it'll help you build an understanding of what scientists and researchers
know and what they're still trying to figure out.
It's really important to keep in mind when you're learning about climate science that
we don't know everything and it is okay to question assumptions. Don’t take anything
you read at face value.
If you’re curious about something, do more research! See if you can email the person
that wrote the thing or whoever they talked to and just ask a couple questions. You’ll
end up with a more complete understanding of the topic than if you just read an article
you pulled off twitter.
Just wanted to get that out of the way, back to resources.
As for climate news, I subscribe to a bunch of newletters that get sent to my email everyday.
My favorite of which is Morning Climate which is run by the MacArthur Foundation - It sends
you a daily update of climate and environmental news, not just in the US but around the world,
which I think is really fantastic.
And once a week they send you a weekly roundup, in case you didn't have time to go through
the entirety of the daily emails.
For an everyday site to check, I like InsideClimate news. They tend to take a deep and significant
look into climate news of the day more so than you’ll get find in other papers or
blogs.
If you’re more of a twitter person, I was going to make a twitter list for you all,
but then I rembered that Eric Holthaus has a really good one, and David Roberts just
made his own list of environmental journalists that all just happen to be women.
We're moving a little further away from fact-based resources, but I want to talk about Podcasts.
I'm a little picky about podcasts. I've listened to a lot of environmental ones over the years.
And I'm going to recommend 2.5 right now.
I really enjoy Warm Regards, which yeah is on haitus right now but there's a huge back
catalog and they promised to be back soon.
It's a podcast between journalists and scientists and other guests about the state of the warming
planet.
It is pretty casual, while still having the reach to talk in-depth about some scientific
issues as well as societal issues. They kinda spread the gamut between enviornmental psychology
to paleobiology and everything in between.
I don't know that those are necessarily two sides of a spectrum. They talk about a lot
of stuff, but they make it all fit together. It's really great!
And this new podcast called Terrestrial that I just started listening to, it is very story
based, very npr-feely, i'm pretty sure it comes out of NPR's storylab.
I've been enjoying it so far, it kind of takes a real, human look at the effects of climate
change.
And additionally Climate One, which I think is also an in person event you can attend
if you're somewhere in California. They also have a podcast stream and I definitely have
it in my podcast app but I scroll through and look at the titles and I'll listen to
a little bit of it. Because some of the panels are hit or miss, but some are really incredible
and you can learn a lot.
And that's about it for right now.
there are tons and tons of environmental and climate resources out there, so I would love
if you could share your go-tos. I'll be adding to the description as people share their favorites.
Oh, and on another unrelated note, I’m going to be at VidCon this year.
If you’ll also be at VidCon I’d love to see or meet you. Or say words to you in a
kind of awkward but kind of fun way. Um... It's really great to meeet the people
behind the pixels and it brings me a lot of joy.
I hope you enjoyed this video. Thanks so much for watching!
Bye