Milton made landfall as a category three hurricane yesterday, the second to hit Florida in about two weeks. Luckily, Milton continued on out to sea and will give the east coast a break. Meanwhile, I had a nice talk with a friend about climate change. I realized as we did that I didn’t really have an elevator speech on the subject. That speech is the one you can give riding up or down in an elevator quickly to explain a product, an idea, anything. Without it, it might mean you don’t really know your product, or the product is just too complicated. Both are bad.

So, now I’m going to try and get a clearer picture on the issue of global warming, or more precisely the impact of humans on that warming. The thread for me starts in 1861 when John Tyndall in London first started talking about the possible impacts of the industrial revolution on the climate. He was a physicist. He came to my attention via Gilbert N. Plass, another physicist, who eventually ended up chairing the department of physics at Texas A&M. I tend to trust people like that because typically they tend to be the sort of person who sees something happening, wonders why, and sets about finding out by exploring the science of the matter.

This is where other scientists get involved. Papers are submitted. Peer reviewed and published. Other people start examining the data and weighing in. People disagree, submit numbers. They get reviewed. Errors are pointed out. A consensus develops. It’s how plate tectonics appeared in the study of geology in the 1960s. That’s what happened or is happening today with defining the human role in climate change. The dicey part is what to do about it, if anything. In my opinion it would be nice if our politicians would sit down and have a discussion on the subject, much as my friend and I did, as we sought to find common ground. They might find some reasonable solutions and wouldn’t that be a treat.