Introductions: ↑ ↑

1. Climate Curious, by environmentalist David Siegel: What he learned about climate change. (This is his web site.)

2. PragerU: What Science Reveals About Climate Change (a series of five-minute videos by top experts).

3. 2018 Annual GWPF Lecture: Global Warming For The Two Cultures, by Prof. Richard Lindzen.

Debates: ↑

4. BestSchools: Karoly/Tamblyn—Happer Dialogue on Global Warming, 2016-2017. An in-depth, balanced, written debate, between leading experts on both sides of the issue.

5. The SOHO Forum in Manhattan has hosted two debates between a top scientist on each side of the climate debate:
• On April 15, 2019 Craig Idso and Jeffrey Bennett debated the question, “Is Carbon Dioxide Endangering the Planet?” (video)
• On August 15, 2022 Steven Koonin and Andrew Dessler debated the question, “Do We Need to Rapidly Convert to Renewables To Save the Planet?” (video)
• On October 27, 2022 the Steamboat Institute hosted another debate between Steven Koonin and Andrew Dessler, this one at Oklahoma State University. They debated the question, “Does climate science compel us to make large and rapid reductions in greenhouse gas emissions?” (video) ↑

6. IQ2US Debate: Is Global Warming A Crisis? (video) was a 2007 televised debate between three top climate experts on each side, which is still surprisingly timely. ↑

(see also: #11, below, the 2014 APS Workshop)

Amicus brief: ↑

7. Three top scientists briefed the judge on climate science, in the 2018 Calif v. BP lawsuit. It was educational for him, and it probably will be for you, too.

Physics & geophysics: ↑↑↑↑

8. The warming effect of CO2 and other so-called “greenhouse gases” is through what is called “radiative forcing.” For an excellent discussion of it I recommend this 2014 UNC Physics Colloquium by Princeton atmospheric physicist Prof. Will Happer.

9. Wilson, 2012, Simple model to estimate the contribution of atmospheric CO2 to the Earth's greenhouse effect.

10. Pierrehumbert, 2011, Infrared radiation and planetary temperature (and discussion).
 
11. In 2014, the American Physical Society held a seven hour long “Climate Change Statement Review Workshop,” in which a panel of leading climate experts discussed the science of climate change, including a lot of discussion of climate sensitivity. The transcript is a daunting 573 pages long, but that's double-spaced and only about 135 words per page, and it is very educational. ↑

How much warming are we talking about, anyhow? ↑
The WMO estimates that since the “pre-industrial” mid-to-late-1800s (late Little Ice Age) the Earth has warmed an average of 1.15±0.13 °C. So, what is the significance of that?

12. 1°C is the temperature change you get from an elevation change of about 500 feet.

13. At mid-latitudes, 1°C is about the temperature change you get from a latitude change of about 60 miles.

14. 1°C is less than the hysteresis (a/k/a “dead zone” or “dead band”) in your home thermostat, which is probably 2-3°F. Your home's “constant” indoor temperatures are continually fluctuating that much, and you probably don't even notice it.

15. In the American Midwest, farmers can fully compensate for 1°C of climate change by adjusting planting dates by about six days.

16. Growing ranges for most important crops include climate zones with average temperatures that vary by tens of °C. Major crops like corn, wheat, potatoes and soybeans are produced from Mexico to Canada. Compared to that, 1°C is negligible.

Sea-level rise is not accelerating: ↑
(Or, at the very least, it's not accelerating significantly — studies vary.)

17. www.sealevel.info (shameless promotion of my own web site -DAB).

18. Clickable thumbnails for NOAA's entire 2016 list of 375 long term trend tide stations.

19. “Acceleration” primer. (Do you know how to recognize “acceleration” in a graph?)

Hurricanes & tropical cyclones are not worsening: ↑

20. Lin & Chan (2015), Recent decrease in typhoon destructive potential and global warming implications. Nature Communications, doi:10.1038/ncomms8182.
Klotzbach & Landsea (2015), Extremely Intense Hurricanes: Revisiting Webster et al. (2005) after 10 Years. Journal of the American Meteorological Society, doi:10.1175/JCLI-D-15-0188.1.
Chand et al. (2022), Declining tropical cyclone frequency under global warming. Nat. Clim. Chang. 12, 655661. doi:10.1038/s41558-022-01388-4

21. Global Hurricane Frequency graph (twelve month running sums), from ClimateAtlas.com/tropical/.

22. Global Tropical Cyclone Accumulated Cyclone Energy graph (ACE), from ClimateAtlas.com/tropical/ (or similar but older graph from wunderground.com).

23. Alimonti & Mariani (2023). Is the number of global natural disasters increasing?, Environmental Hazards, doi:10.1080/17477891.2023.2239807. (See also these discussions of their 2022 paper: [1][2][3].)

Tornadoes are becoming less destructive: ↑

24. 2018 US tornadoes lowest in 65 years of record-keeping, by meteorologist Anthony Watts.

25. NOAA: U.S. Annual Count of Strong to Violent Tornadoes (F3+), 1954 through 2014 (graph).

25. WoodTV: Strong to Violent Tornadoes in the U.S. Trending Downward, by meteorologist Bill Steffen (graph).

26. Climate at a Glance: Tornadoes, by Heartland Institute (graph).

27. Simmons, Sutter & Pielke (2013). Normalized tornado damage in the United States: 1950-2011, Environmental Hazards, Vol. 12, No. 2, 132 147, doi:10.1080/17477891.2012.738642.

28. Zhang, et al (2023). Time trends in losses from major tornadoes in the United States. Weather and Climate Extremes, Volume 41, 100579. doi:10.1016/j.wace.2023.100579.

Droughts are not worsening (and drought impacts are decreasing): ↑

29. Global integrated drought monitoring and prediction system (and graph).

30. U.S. droughts are not worsening: NOAA NCDC U.S. percentage very wet or very dry (and graph).

31. European droughts are not worsening, either (and graph).

Climate change is not worsening forest fires: ↑

32. The main factors affecting fires are land management and forestry practices.[2] Contrary to the shockingly dishonest propaganda from some quarters (like the misnamed factcheck.org site), global warming has negligible impact on wildfires.

33. NASA satellites monitor fires from orbit, and they've measured a decreasing trend in fires. NASA reports that, “...MODIS [satellite instruments have measured] a decrease in the total number of square kilometers burned each year. Between 2003 and 2019, that number has dropped by roughly 25 percent.” The percentage of the globe which burns each year has been declining since 2002. In 2022, the world hit a new record-low of 2.2% burned area.

34. If warmer temperatures significantly worsened fire risks, then in the United States forest fires would mostly occur in the South. But most large U.S. forest fires have been in the North. The worst forest fire in American history was in chilly Wisconsin, in October, 1871, when CO₂ (estimated from ice cores) was only about 288 ppmv. That one fire consumed about 1.2 million acres, and it is believed to have killed at least 1200 people. Many of them died of hypothermia, while trying to shelter from the fire in the frigid Pestigo River.
Here are some additional resources on U.S. fires: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6a/6b]

Current temperatures are not unprecedented: ↑

35. Scientists call warm periods, like the current warm period, “climate optimums.”
Current globally averaged temperatures are warmer than they've been in hundreds of years, but probably similar to temperatures during earlier climate optimums, like the Medieval Warm Period, the Roman Warm Period, and the Bronze Age Warm Period. Most studies find that current temperatures are substantially lower than they were during the Mid-Holocene Climate Optimum [2] [3] [4] [5], and several degrees below what they were during warmest part of the Eemian Interglacial.

Recent warming has not been unusually rapid: ↑↑

36. Depending on which temperature index you choose (graph source), global temperatures are believed to have been rising at an average rate of between 0.06°C and 0.16°C per decade since 1958 (the start of the Mauna Loa CO₂ measurement record), as atmospheric CO2 level rose from 315 ppmv to 421 ppmv. Based on the trends in temperature and CO2 level, we could expect at most a little over 1°C of additional warming by 2100.
That's a small change, and a very slow rate of change, in comparison with past natural changes in the Earth's temperatures. We know from ice core isotope analyses that over the last 100,000 years the Earth has experienced dozens of natural “Dansgaard-Oeschger events” (a/k/a “Greenland interstadials”) in which temperatures changed at rates as rapid as several degrees per decade. (Caveat: The most rapid changes are seen in Greenland ice cores, but Greenland's temperature changes tend, in general, to be at least twice as rapid as globally averaged temperature changes, due to “Arctic amplification.”)
Those much larger and more rapid (but 100% natural!) temperature changes are known to have been globally synchronous, though much less abrupt in the southern hemisphere. They persisted for hundreds or (more typically) thousands of years — and nobody knows with certainty why they occurred.
Fortunately, those very large, abrupt temperature changes apparently did not cause mass extinctions. Mankind, polar bears, pikas, coral[2][3][4], and nearly every other existing species of animal and plant all survived those sharp climate changes. That suggests we needn't fear that the current (comparatively slight) warming trend could be catastrophic for them. ↑

What about feedbacks? ↑

37. Dozens of “feedback mechanisms” affect the Earth's climate. Some are “positive” (amplifying), others are “negative” (attenuating).
My web page on the topic includes an overview of how feedback systems work, how feedbacks are analyzed, and a comprehensive list of climate feedbacks, both positive and negative.

What about the claimed “97% consensus”? ↑

38. Q: Is there a 97% consensus for climate alarmism,
or did over 30,000 scientists say global warming is a hoax?
23. A: Neither. The best evidence is that manmade climate change is real, but modest and benign. The only consensus is that emissions of so-called “greenhouse gases” (GHGs) help warm the Earth. There's no consensus that it's harmful. A warmer climate is generally beneficial, which is why scientists call periods of warm climate “climate optimums.”

Benefits of rising CO₂ levels ↑
 
The peer-reviewed scientific evidence is compelling that the so-called “social cost of carbon” is negative, meaning that CO2 emissions are net-beneficial, rather than harmful…

…for deserts & natural ecosystems:
39. “Greening” the Earth. ↑

…and for agriculture:
40. Carbonic Acid Gas to Fertilize the Air, Scientific American, Nov. 27, 1920. ↑↑

41. The Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change (“CO2 Science”) is a 501(c)(3) educational charity, dedicated to factual climate science. They maintain a huge and extremely useful plant growth database, which catalogs scientific studies of the effects of varying CO2 levels on hundreds of plants.

42. The CO2 Coalition is another 501(c)(3) educational charity, with a powerhouse board of scientific experts, dedicated to promoting scientific accuracy about the effects of CO2 emissions. They have a wealth of excellent information, like this report about a new study showing that the “social cost of carbon” is negative. (Note: I am a member. -DAB)

43. The Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) is a UK educational charity and think tank, with a prestigious Academic Advisory Council, focused on analysis of climate-related public policies and their economic and environmental implications. They've produced a superb series of in-depth reports (like this one on The Good News About Carbon Dioxide), shorter briefing papers, reports, notes and lectures.

44. Increased agricultural productivity and improved drought resilience due to rising CO₂ level are helping to make fam­ines increas­ingly rare, for the first time in human history (see bar chart).
That's a very, very Big Deal. Famine used to be a scourge comparable to war and epidemic. For comparison: COVID-19 has killed about 0.1% of the world's population (so far), WWII killed 2.7% of the world's population, and the catastrophic 1918 flu pandemic killed about 2%. But the nearly-worldwide drought and famine of 1876-78 killed about 3.7% of the world's population! ↑↑

45. One of the fathers of modern climatology was the great Swedish scientist and Nobel laureate, Svante Arrhenius. He was the first person to quantify the warming effect of mankind's CO₂ emissions, and he correctly predicted that it would benefit agriculture. He even predicted what is now called “polar amplification.” In a 1908 book he wrote, "By the influence of the increasing percentage of carbonic acid in the atmosphere, we may hope to enjoy ages with more equable and better climates,… when the earth will bring forth much more abundant crops than at present, for the benefit of rapidly propagating mankind." ↑

Ten top climate blogs:^†  ↑

…For news, analysis & discussion:
46. Watts Up With That (“WUWT”), by Anthony Watts.

…For in-depth analysis: (realist/skeptical/lukewarmist/moderate)
47. Climate Etc. by Judith Curry.
48. Roy Spencer.
49. Climate Audit, by Steve McIntyre.
50. Andy May.
51. Jo Nova.

…and, for balance, the four best alarmist blogs:
52. Moyhu, by Nick Stokes.
53. Science of Doom, by Steve Carson.
54. All Models Are Wrong (but some are useful), by Tamsin Edwards.
55. Protons for Breakfast, by Michael de Podesta.

^†Note: blogs which are censored to suppress dissent are not listed. (I don't take issue with enforcement of civility.) That unfortunately includes several prominent alarmist blogs. That's why I could only find four alarmist blogs to recommend. If you know of any other reasonably good quality alarmist climate blogs, which are not censored to suppress dissent, please tell me about them. ↑


56. Want more? I also maintain a long list of climate blogs and other useful sites, and I've written many Quora Answers on climate change (including one which is similar to this web page). I can also enthusiastically recommend Heartland Institute's Climate At A Glance web site. ↑
You're also welcome to contact me (Dave Burton), directly. My contact info is here:
https://sealevel.info/contact.html