Get your climate change science on the run

Somebody said that “lies are half way around the world before truth gets its boots on.” An underestimate, I would say.

With the current hysterical attack on climate science and climate scientists this is so true. It takes time to marshal the evidence needed to counter some of the claims being made. And most likely the perpetrator has moved on, in a Gish gallop, to a new issue and avoids facing up to the facts about the old one.

The internet is a great resource for people checking out some of the wild claims being made – providing you use reliable websites. One reliable site is Skeptical science, which has a byline of “Getting skeptical about global warming skepticism.” This site provides the actual scientific facts relevant to most claims made by climate change sceptics and deniers.

Now they have produced an application for the iPhone and ipod Touch. This will bring the much needed scientific information about climate change to your mobile device. Just imagine being able to check out a speaker during a lecture or debate – maybe even obtain the information of a sensible question.

Here’s a description of how to use the application taken from Skeptical Science now an iPhone app. at Skeptical science:

When you select one of the 3 main categories, a list of sub-categories pop up. You can then select any category to see the skeptic argument, a summary of what the science says and the full answer including graphs plus links to papers or other sources.

A novel inclusion is a feature that lets you report when you encounter a skeptic argument. By clicking on the red ear icon (above left, shown to the left of the skeptic arguments or above right, next to the headline), the iPhone adds another hit to that particular skeptic argument. At the moment, which arguments you report are only available in a My Reports page, shown below. Shine Tech are hoping to play around with the Reports meta-data in future versions of the app – the phrase “heat-map” gets mentioned often.

So if you have an iPhone or iPod, be sure to download the app and post any feedback or suggestions here. If you have friends with iPhones, be sure to let them know of the app. The more people use the app, hopefully the more versions will be developed in the future with snazzy extra features. If anyone encounters any technical problems with the app, please let me know.

UPDATE 11 Feb 2010: Thanks for the feedback so far (I’ve passed it onto Shine Tech who I’m sure will be reading this thread also). One other thing I forgot to ask – for those who are able to use the app, please be sure to post a review on iTunes 🙂

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