Climate science and climate scientists have been steadily losing the public’s trust over the past few months. First came the “climategate” scandal involving the release of thousands of emails from the University of East Anglia (analysis here and exoneration here). Recently “glaciergate” – in which an assertion in the IPCC’s last assessment report that Himalayan glaciers could disappear by 2030 was cited from a dubious source. Over the past few weeks Rajendra K. Pachauri, the head of the IPCC, has faced personal attacks and calls for him to step down for an alleged conflict of interest.

Despite these allegations, evidence of human induced global warming/climate change continues to mount.

Screenshot of climate.gov

Climate science is losing the PR battle in the short term, but I am confident that  data driven evidence of continued change in the climate system will win the war. (“Win” may be a misnomer – the likely catastrophic effects of unchecked climate change will result in very few winners).

One of the major calls that came out of the climategate scandal was the lack of transparency in climate science circles (despite the fact that the vast majority of raw climate data is available publicly online). One response to this call in my opinion is a new climate data portal: climate.gov from NOAA (the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration). It is a well designed, informative website with resources ranging from raw climate data, to explanations for natural climate variability, to video about using seasonal climate information to improve livelihoods. I really like the Global Climate Dashboard seen on the right:

Highlights of the site include (from the NOAA press release):
- An interactive “climate dashboard” that lets users see a range of constantly updating climate datasets (e.g., temperature, carbon dioxide concentration, and sea level) over adjustable time scales;
- A new Web-based climate science magazine called ClimateWatch, featuring videos and articles of scientists discussing their recent climate research and topics that cannot be relayed in charts and graphs;
- Explanations and exploration of data products available from NOAA and partner agencies, with direct links to the sources of the comprehensive datasets;
- Educational resources for students and teachers, including lesson plans for the classroom and laboratory, educational games and interactive media; and
- Easy-to-understand fact sheets and presentations for professionals and the public about climate science, research and climate impacts.

Can one website win the PR battle? Probably not. But climate.gov is a good start in providing the public with easy to use resources based on hard data from a well-respected government agency.