I went to a public lecture on climate change last night (because I just didn’t get enough of that last week at AGU, apparently), where four professors from different departments at my university spoke about their work. They were great speeches – it sort of reminded me of TED Talks – but I was actually most interested in the audience questions and comments afterward.

There was the token crazy guy who stood up and said “The sun is getting hotter every day and one day we’re all going to FRY! So what does that say about your global warming theory? Besides, if it was CO2 we could all just stop breathing!” Luckily, everybody laughed at his comments…

There were also some more reasonable-sounding people, repeating common myths like “It’s a natural cycle” and “Volcanoes emit more CO2 than humans“. The speakers did a good job of explaining why these claims were false, but I still wanted to pull out the Skeptical Science app and wave it in the air…

Overall, though, the audience seemed to be composed of concerned citizens who understood the causes and severity of climate change, and were eager to learn about impacts, particularly on extreme weather. It was nice to see an audience moving past this silly public debate into a more productive one about risk management.

The best moment, though, was on the bus home. There was a first-year student in the seat behind me – I assume he came to see the lecture as well, but maybe he just talks about climate change on the bus all the time. He was telling his friend about sea level rise, and he was saying all the right things – we can expect one or two metres by the end of the century, which doesn’t sound like a lot, but it’s enough to endanger many densely populated coastal cities, as well as kill vegetation due to seawater seeping in.

He even had the statistics right! I was so proud! I was thinking about turning around to join in the conversation, but by then I had been listening in for so long that it would have been embarrassing.

It’s nice to see evidence of a shift in public understanding, even if it’s only anecdotal. Maybe we’re doing something right after all.