Having doubts about global warming? Don't. Keep up with climate literacy.

We're getting tired of snow and ice and want the polar vortex to swirl around the north pole where it belongs, thank you very much.  Plenty of individuals with limited "climate literacy" point to the enduring heaps of snow and extended periods of below freezing temperatures and doubt the evidence of a warming planet caused by human activity.  The disruption of typical climate cycles and weather patterns (flood and high-wind warnings today!) increases the urgency that more people understand the complexity and interrelatedness of climatic features.

The library has over 2450 items in the collection with subject headings of Climatic changes or Climate change mitigation.  Where to begin?  Perhaps a quick review for non-specialists, online for free from an independent, scientifically reliable source, is a good starting point.  Two suggestions:

Climate Change: Evidence, Impacts, and Choices.  National Research Council
Climate Literacy: the Essential Principles of Climate science.  U.S. Global Research Program

National Research Council

These reports were distributed at the recent meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and are at the science library reference desk, in print.  Prefer to get your information through a video?  See Climate Change at the National Academies - videos & multimedia.

For up to the minute news stories from around the world, see EcoWatch Climate Change News.  And don't forget the thousands of books and other items found through OBIS.  Far better to rely on those sources of information than so-called climate change "debates" on Fox News or other media outlets with dubious credentials for accurate coverage of scientific topics.