Magnetic stripes on the sea floor

(Click the image above; it looks better on a white background. Then come back.)

This is about climate.

Plate tectonics was doubted when all it had was conjecture and a few continental shelves that sort of fit together. That was until paired magnetic striping was found on either side of the mid-0cean ridges. It was predicted -- and verified. In a classic demonstration of Occam's Razor, everything else: the Emperor Seamounts, the Ring of Fire, sea level rise and fall, even major geologic eras -- fell into place.


A lot of people have trouble believing that climate change is real because it's "in the future", it can't be seen now, and they can propose other explanations for it: variability of the Sun, galactic cosmic rays, even just bad data. Now, real climate scientists will tell you (us) that increasing greenhouse gases are the parsimonious explanation for the trends and patterns and changes we are observing -- but the general public, and particularly those inclined to be misled, don't have evidence like the magnetic stripes on the sea floor that brooks no other explanation.

That's what is needed.