What is the evidence for climate change? Can you provide me with the resources where you get your information?

1 Answer
Mar 10, 2016

The global average temperature.

Explanation:

NOAA, the national oceanic and atmospheric administration, does lots of different studies and collects vast amounts of data. They put out all sorts of different reports, but the one report that sums it all up is https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/201513.

This latest report, for 2015, explains how 2015 ended up being the warmest year on record (since 1880). It also goes on to illustrate that the warmest 15 years have all occurred since 1998. In fact the last 3 years where the warmest, second warmest and fourth warmest years on record.

The thing to keep in mind about this is that this isn't a biased organization. There is no benefit to NOAA whether global warming is real or not (their budget is not effected either way). In fact with certain presidents one would think it would be in NOAA's best interest to disprove global warming (George Bush Jr. certainly wanted to deny it).

Multiple organizations have observed the same trends in rising temperatures:
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/WorldOfChange/decadaltemp.php

The balance between the sun and the Earth has to be maintained in order for temperatures to remain the same.

enter image source here

useruploads.socratic.org

The diagram above shows how the amount of incoming radiation ends up equaling the amount of outgoing radiation from the Earth. If you look near the middle you will see 15% absorption by greenhouse gases. The problem is if the amount of greenhouse gases increase than that 15 will go up to 16% then we are not in balance anymore. Of the energy the Earth received only 99% of it would radiate back into space. If that happened the surface of the Earth would have to heat up in order to radiate more energy to balance it out again.

If you accept the fact that we have to be in balance with the sun (no one argues this), and accept that the greenhouse effect is part of this balance (no one argues this) then you have to accept that increasing the amount of greenhouse gases has to increase the temperature.