I now give science talks here in town, and I may have blow someone's minds last month. The topic of radiocarbon dating came up so I spent about 10 minutes talking about what radioactivity is, why carbon is used for "young" things, how we know it works etc. The guy who asked the question wanted me to talk about isotopes as I sort of '30,000ft' the conversation. Somehow, I got to talking about O-16 versus O-18 and how it can be used to determine temperatures in ancient air samples in glacial air bubbles. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxygen_isotope_ratio_cycle link for the interested. Oh, I was talking about using PET in cancer treatment, and using Oxygen isotopes. That is how it came up.

This had nothing to do with climate change, nothing to do with politics, it was a side conversation about how atoms work. Two people after the talk asked me to write that wiki link down so the could read it; nobody had ever explained to them the HOW they come up with the idea that the earth is getting warmer and why they are confident this is true.

In another thread today (waiting for parts on RMA so I have down time ) the conversation was about eavesdropping. One of the things we forget sometimes on the internet is that the whole world is eavesdropping on us, having this conversation, every conversation. You never know who is reading your words. The amusing thing for me is that I've been on the internet so long I naturally talk to an audience instead of an individual and have to make a concentrated effort to not do that in person. Every time I use this handle on the internet, I assume everyone is going to see it and act accordingly.

So to sort of come back around to a point on topic for those who are eavesdropping, my talking about oxygen isotopes and what they are used for may have opened the minds of two climate "skeptics." Or it hardened them either further, I guess I'll find out if they show up at a future talk.

The guy who asked the question sent me an email after reading about nuclear physics on wikipedia with the comment "I never realized how much stuff I never knew about!" That is how you fight nonsense, in my opinion. Expose people to the "I had no idea people knew this stuff" and let their curiosity hopefully guide them in the right direction.