droenn
Fat Man's XC President
Bombarding with data and graphs does not work, and has not worked, and is where us scientists really failed in communication.So we've all seen those standard deviation graphs? I hadn't until recently.
Most of us are uninformed.
In today's world a theory means "I have an idea" and consensus means "some people think", and its very hard to speak to the individual when they are being hit with "opinions" from all over, and typically gravitate towards the loudest voices shouting "its not real". Why? because it is far easier to accept something that means you don't have change your behavior than something that tells you do. And the media doesn't help with their ideas of "balance" which normally means taking the two polar opposite views, no matter that the weight of evidence lies one one side, and the other side is someone who probably just runs a forum on talking about how the moon-landing was fake.
The other aspect is that human life is short, and climate records are long. Its hard to get your mind around the timescales things used to happen, versus now. This actually used to be a lot of the problem with debating creationists and intelligent design proponents, they just don't understand the vast difference in scale that most geological time periods actually went for.
So, I take some solace when weather records get broken - its far easier to communicate that to people: "yes its hot now and we haven't had it this hot before (shut up about the Federation drought, and1939 and the 60s), and YOU are living in it".