My boyfriend is skeptical about climate change effects...

I'm not sure his methodology is sound, but the more you dig on this topic the less certain it seems (as it is with most science). This is unadulterated horseshit, but very useful to see as it's a big part of the mentality of deniers. Something I personally have found successful with skeptics is discuss the actions that banks and insurance companies are taking with regard to climate change. For some reason, the opinions of bankers seems to carry more weight than that of scientists and international bodies. The other thing that can help is to selectively flip information about climate change that is currently happening from sites like Climate Reality that report on that kind of stuff. It's a lot easier to tune out vague, future discussion of climate change as it is largely shown in the media, much harder to ignore specific things http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-11-21/kiribati-climate-change-destroys-pacific-island-nation#p1 that are happening right now. The last thing to do is to demonstrate how literally every single denialist 'expert' is on the payroll of carbon polluters (mostly big coal, also big oil), and how everything they do and all the coverage they get is sponsored by these companies, using the same model, and in some cases http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merchants_of_Doubt who spent decades denying that tobacco caused cancer, and that there wasn't enough certainty, etc etc. Best of luck, it will take a while, you can get there.

You're a psychology student, so you're not an expert, either. You believe what you believe for reasons that are just "emotional" as you may think his to be. Whatever individuals believe about the reality of current announcements re: climate change is, has been noted, totally irrelevant. If shit is gonna go down, it will, regardless of whether people believe it or not.

Good god, people are quoting Dilbert to justify skepticism about climate change? The 'financial incentives' thing has always stood out for me. Yeah, because an NSF post-doc is soooo lucrative, right? Someone brings up the financial incentives thing, it might be worth thinking about where the real money is.... As for advice on how not to let this adversely effect your relationship... well, let it go is ok. I mean, I've dated and been in love with woman who were really in to 'woo': past-lives, crystal healing, whatever. It's all bollocks as far as I'm concerned, but there was no reason to let that make any difference at all to the relationship. I'm sure that similar dynamics happen over disagreements on religion, or politics....

I think you should just drop it; "you can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into." If he brings up the subject again, just say "sorry, I don't want to discuss this until you've acquainted yourself with the evidence."

I'm not sure his methodology is sound, but the more you dig on this topic the less certain it seems (as it is with most science). There are some huge methodological and statistical problems with the most-referenced studies. That doesn't make them wrong, but it also does cast doubt on their conclusions. One of the most bizarre thing about climate science, to me, is the heavy reliance on computer models that have, themselves, not been validated to have any predictive ability. In fact, basically every computer model the IPCC has referenced in its reports have shown, after the fact, to not map accurately onto reality. So if your conclusions are based on those models, your conclusions are pretty suspect. This isn't really the "settled" issue that some people believe it to be -- there are still a LOT of unknowns. There are many peer-reviewed studies out there supporting the notion that humans are the primary driver of the recent warming, but science isn't a democracy and consensus is not the same as correctness. You and your boyfriend, both, would benefit greatly from actually digging into the studies that are out there and the criticisms of them. You're both sure that you're right and the other is wrong, but maybe you can set that aside and make really learning this topic inside and out a joint project. By the end of it, you might agree one way or the other. If not, you should at least both a) have more objective claims based on facts and reason and b) be able to recognize the strengths of the other person's position. As gsh said: you're both laypeople with opinions here that are not based on your own individual research or your own readings of source material. So rather than assuming you're right and he's blind/stupid, you could both educate yourselves and become more knowledgeable. There are actual climate scientists on both "sides" of this issue, regardless of what you might hear.

"show your work" is something a math/compsci grad should be familiar with, is my thinking, Chocolate Pickle.

Personally, I'd let it go. Like you said, he is a layperson, so his opinion about climate change isn't going to make much of a difference to anyone else. And I can sympathize with those who simply don't want to believe that things are as bad as they are. It's pretty terrifying, really, and maybe he just doesn't want to acknowledge or even think about it.

Look, this isn't going to help at all with your boyfriend, but here's how I think about it. It takes decades to become a climate expert. Even if you went out and read a bunch of primary source articles on the topic, it would take years before you could legitimately evaluate them. I am a scientist in a natural resource field, but I am not a climate scientist. The best I can do is trust the consensus of existing climate scientists. Or doctors studying vaccines. Or public health researchers who think a lot about Ebola. No, it's not a democracy. But if there is a better explanation for how the earth's climate system works than the existing models, that new model would be accepted pretty quickly. Science is very quickly self-correcting these days. In the 1970s, there was some fear from climate scientists that the world was getting colder. It was rejected thanks to the recognition of anthropogenic global warming. That's not evidence against the current thinking, it's evidence that scientists can, and do, change their mind when new evidence comes to light. We can not be experts on everything. "Climate skeptics" are not evaluating the existing evidence using any reasonable framework of scientific epistemology. I'm not even talking hypothetico-deductive method. There are lots of ways that scientists learn things. Reading a bunch of articles about why climate scientists might be biased because they are funded to do research is not one of them. You can always ask him to http://www.metafilter.com/87315/Climategate#2856551

It sounds like he believes not that the climate isn't changing, but that the potential effects are overstated, and that scientific measures of certainty cast the whole enterprise into doubt. If the predicted temperature rise over the next hundred years is between 2.5 and 10 degrees, and it turns out to be at the lower end of the scale, who cares, right? 2.5 degrees isn't much! And they aren't 100% certain! (As if anyone could be 100% certain of anything.) But as far as human impacts are concerned, the climate doesn't work linearly like that. It's more about tipping points, i.e., what is the temperature at which the snow pack in the the western mountains begins to shrink, and what long-term effects does that have on summer time water flows? https://climate.nasa.gov/effects/. And all you have to do is http://www.weatherwest.com/archives/1797. One can say, "there is likely to be a severe drought in within X years, lasting Y months." The world "likely" isn't an expression of uncertainty, here. If the trend line is valid, it's a mathematical certainty that there will be more, and more severe, droughts. What is uncertain is exactly when, and exactly for how long. In California's case, the answer is "now." But given how easy it is to find this information, someone would have to be really averse to knowing the facts to avoid it. I'd say that this is less about the specific issue of climate change and more about whether you want to spend your days with someone who'd rather take an essentially religious position on such an important and easy to understand subject. My partner and I tolerate a certain amount of superstition on both sides, but there are limits -- we have to be able to respect each other.