The evidence of anthropogenic warming is both extensive and pervasive. Unfortunately, most people fail to understand the basics. As a retired research meteorologist with undergraduate and graduate degrees in meteorology and as a developer of atmospheric models at NASA and the National Weather Service, I will try to explain the basics to you. You start with a theory and collect evidence to either support or disprove the theory. In the case of anthropogenic warming from the release of CO2, the theory has been around for some time. I think Manabe's 1967 paper is perhaps the best place to start. Essentially, if anthropogenic CO2 is going to have an impact you will see the lower troposphere warm and the stratosphere cool. Increasing CO2 impacts the net long wave radiation budget. A more detailed explanation is beyond the scope of this post. Again, there is extensive observational data that shows this effect. You can do literature searches fairly easily but the best place to start is AR6. Roy Spencer has a 40+ year tropospheric satellite dataset that shows significant warming (and he is not a doom and gloomer by any stretch of the imagination). What most people get wrong is the impact and time scale. It is about 1C for the global average surface temperature anomaly. This is in the last 100 years. The issue is time scale. Climatic changes driven by the three Milankovitch cycles have much longer time scales: 20,000 to 100,000 years. The concern is not what will happen in 40,000 years but what will happen by the end of the century. Predictions for the remainder of the century come from coupled climate modeling, which is still an area of research. Retrospective integrations seem to be a bit warm. The biggest issue, IMO, is that the press and politicians appear to have chosen to focus on the most pessimistic 8.5 scenario that shows the global average surface temperature anomaly as high as 10C. That would be a big problem. I don't think there is much doubt that the temperature anomaly will grow to 2C or more. I believe that negative feedbacks in the atmospheric/oceanic/land surface system reduce the probability of a 10C temperature anomaly by the end of the century. Modeling these systems is difficult and getting all the positive and negative feedback correct is a challenge (which is why it is still an area of research). However, a couple of degrees will have geopolitical consequences which is what many Governments may be worried about. The other issue is that I just don't believe we (the world) can do anything to substantially cut CO2 emissions for the next 50 years. For example, the US emits about 11% of the global CO2. Even if we dropped to zero tomorrow, it would not have much of an impact. Doing what we can within practical limits is a good idea. I would put most efforts into remediating coastal regions for the continued rise in ocean levels. The world is not going to end but it will continue to get warmer and the impact varies geographically.
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Originally Posted by Byte1
"Beyond comprehension?" "flat earthers?" Is that how you shut up any opposition to your OPINION? You have proved nothing to prove your point, yet. I suppose lighting a candle will warm the air around me, but it does not change the cyclic climate changes. The problem many on here have is that even though EVERYONE agrees that there is Climate Change, some believe man has no control over changing it one way or another. Of course, if you can't prove your OPINION that we should waste trillions of tax revenues on research to prove your opinion, then it's better to squelch anyone else's questions, such as "please provide some evidence that man is responsible for climate change." A very simple request, that many are not equipped to provide such evidence. On the other hand, a really great answer to why we might have a colder winter than seen in decades, is that Global Warming is causing the frigid temperatures. Instead of acknowledging that the oceans are warmer and underwater volcano eruptions may contribute to the warming, we get the unfounded response that man is warming the air, combined with cow flatulence. I guess that is proven by the fact that we had tropical temperatures when dinosaurs roamed the earth.
I am open minded when it comes to REAL evidence that man is responsible for Climate Change. But, so far no one has provided such evidence. Saying that the climate changes and man exists, therefore man must be in control of the climate is kind of arrogant, in my opinion. On the other hand, I believe that man is responsible partially for air pollution. But, NOT all air pollution.
If you cannot prove your view that man is responsible for climate change, then you are merely expressing your opinion. An opinion that is only reinforced by folks titled as "scientists" that are being subsidized by the government to provide so-called "expert" opinions, based on theory, not tangible evidence.
According to some on here, when the rotation of Earth around the Sun changes or when we move further or closer to the sun, the days don't get shorter or longer. The reason the daylight changes is because we change our clocks. Therefore man is changing the length of daylight.
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