I am trying to prove the case for global warming to a rabid Republican doubter, who calls it "junk science."

Question

Aside from melting of the polar ice masses, what other evidence is there?

Answer 1

the problem is that the data al gore used did not tell the whole story.....if you go back another couple hundred years or more it was 10 degrees C hotter than it is now.....it may be global warming but it is not man made and it is part of the earths normal cycle

also if you are old enough, the same scientists were warning about the coming ice age in the 1970's......it was on the cover of time magazine....you can check if you don't believe me

Answer 2

Basically we know it's warming, and we've measured how much:

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/img/climate/research/2005/ann/global-blended-temp-pg.gif

Scientists have a good idea how the Sun and the Earth's natural cycles and volcanoes and all those natural effects change the global climate, so they've gone back and checked to see if they could be responsible for the current global warming. What they found is:

Over the past 30 years, all solar effects on the global climate have been in the direction of (slight) cooling, not warming. This is during a very rapid period of global warming.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/6290228.stm
http://www.pubs.royalsoc.ac.uk/media/proceedings_a/rspa20071880.pdf

So the Sun certainly isn't a large factor in the current warming. They've also looked at natural cycles, and found that we should be in the middle of a cooling period right now.

"An often-cited 1980 study by Imbrie and Imbrie determined that 'Ignoring anthropogenic and other possible sources of variation acting at frequencies higher than one cycle per 19,000 years, this model predicts that the long-term cooling trend which began some 6,000 years ago will continue for the next 23,000 years.'"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milankovitch_cycle

So it's definitely not the Earth's natural cycles. They looked at volcanoes, and found that

a) volcanoes cause more global cooling than warming, because the particles they emit block sunlight

b) humans emit over 150 times more CO2 than volcanoes annually

http://volcano.und.edu/vwdocs/Gases/man.html
So it's certainly not due to volcanoes. Then they looked at human greenhouse gas emissions. We know how much atmospheric CO2 concentrations have increased over the past 50 years:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Mauna_Loa_Carbon_Dioxide.png

And we know from isotope ratios that this increase is due entirely to human emissions from burning fossil fuels. We know how much of a greenhouse effect these gases like carbon dioxide have, and the increase we've seen is enough to have caused almost all of the warming we've seen over the past 30 years (about 80-90%). You can see a model of the various factors over the past century here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Climate_Change_Attribution.png

This is enough evidence to convince almost all climate scientists that humans are the primary cause of the current global warming.

Answer 3

If you try to 'prove' something, if you argue, it's likely you will fail. People don't like being 'shown' how wrong they are, forced into acceptance, or beaten. If you have a good relationship with this person, use positive psychology instead. Show him/her instead how important our planet is to you. Show how you reduce your carbon footprint, or consumption. 'Global Warming' is a buzzword issue, with both sides having some pretty set arguments and counter-arguments. Let your friend come to care about the environment through other, non-controversial ways, and then he/she may accept the idea of climate change on his/her own.

Answer 4

The evidence provided by the IPCC http://www.ipcc.ch
was enough to convince the Bush administration.

but in the end most people don't care about evidence unless it supports their lifestyle choice. there is no discussion or dialogue possible with some people; the best you can do is isolate them so the rest of us can get on with creating a life sustaining society.

If we were on a spaceship and someone was sabotaging the life-support systems and grabbing all the food-replicator tokens for themselves - then we would shove them out the nearest airlock.

Simple question: how can a human population increasing from 6 to 9bn all aspiring to hollywood lifestyle and an industrial growth economy be supported on our finite spaceship planet?

http://www.greatturningtimes.org

Answer 5

There is certainly a lot of junk science out there - the recent example being that someone from Oxfam claims that natural disasters are up by 400% in the last 20 years because of global warming. The only reason reports like that get media attention is because they are junk science.

Up untill very recently, the worst science tended to get the best coverage, but since the IPCC released their working group reports, a lot of the wild claims have disapeared.

Earlier this year, When these reports started comming out of the IPCC, a lot of pro AGW commentators were in disbelief and claimed that the concensus was artifically low and predicted that as negotiations continued between the committee members, this predicted warming would rise.

I think comparing a theory to the IPCC reports is a good way to gauge it's credibility. More gulliable believers have enthusiastically received new reports that haven't had time to be reviewed by the IPCC as breakthroughs - but this is nonsense as there have been very few changes in the theory of global warming since I first started reading about it 15 years ago.

Answer 6

As Jesus said, there are none so blind as those who will not see. Evidence will not convince your friend, no matter how much you have. He will just pile on deeper and deeper layers of denial, crying data corruption and global conspiracy at every turn. There are still those who believe in the flat earth. Mike Huckabee has a college education and he doesn't believe evolution is real. Evidence is not the issue. Mindset is.

But if you want to try the evidence route, you can start with these:
1. Global temperature records 1850-2006 from the Hadley Centre (UK Meteorological Office):
http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadcrut3/data/download.html
2. Global temperature records 1880-2006 from NASA-Goddard Institute of Space Studies:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabledata/GLB.Ts+dSST.txt
3. Glacier retreat:
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1994Sci...264..243O
4. Increased greenhouse effect "smoking gun" #1: stratospheric cooling. (As more heat is trapped at the surface, less heat escapes to the stratosphere).
http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadat/images/update_images/global_upper_air.png
http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/temp/sterin/sterin.html
5. Increased greenhouse effect "smoking gun" #2: decreased daily temperature range. (Less heat radiated away at night means nighttime temps rise faster.)
http://ams.allenpress.com/perlserv/?request=get-abstract&doi=10.1175%2F1520-0450(1984)023%3C1489:DDTRIT%3E2.0.CO%3B2
http://www.bom.gov.au/bmrc/clfor/cfstaff/jma/2004GL019998.pdf
http://tyndall.webapp1.uea.ac.uk/publications/working_papers/wp55.pdf

Answer 7

What more does an intelligent person need?
Tons of mile high ice melting at a much faster rate then for the last fifty years. Me think that should be enough.
Glaciers all over the world are receding.

UGH!!!!!

Answer 8

Those rabid Republicans can be stubborn. You might be better off just worrying about yourself. Besides, skepticism can be a good thing. It helps expose flaws in theories that are weak so that those who promote such theories will try to strengthen their position.

Answer 9

Save your energy and just do your part and get the worlds cleanest car. It runs on compressed air and scheduled to be on the market in 2008. It suppose to be way cheaper than the hydrogen cars.

Answer 10

Just forget that the south pole is gaining in ice mass, the southern hemisphere has experienced the coldest winter since 1850, and the science is purely subjective, there plenty of evidence.

And if all else fails, just say "But what about the Children?!?"

No, but seriously, good luck. There is no proof.