What evidence is there for global warming?

There is plenty of evidence and broad consensus among mainsteam climate scientists that the earth is warming, even though there has been no measurable warming in the last 18 years.

There is a problem between knowing and doing. As of 2013, the world consumed 7.8 billion tons of coal per year. China alone consumed about half that, 3.56 billion tons, and China has no intention of reducing their coal consumption. I point this out because it really doesn't matter what an individual does or even a whole nation. China's contribution to atmospheric greenhouse gasses is enough to push us into runaway warming regardless of what the rest of the world does.

That's why I don't take the whole debate seriously. If CO2 is going to destroy the earth, it will. All this hullabaloo about alternative energy is just pissing in the ocean. There are many things you can do to help your little corner of the planet. If you want to talk sustainable or eco-friendly we can have a really good conversation....Show more

I am a green person too and I want to look after the environment, however I do not believe in global warming and I am sickened my the vast amounts of money wasted on this political matter, when we could be doing something useful for this planet, like preventing deforestation, preventing our oceans being filled with plastic garbage and agricultural waste products and heavy metals from industry.
We could be planting trees or reclaiming deserts.
You can tell it is political, look at this push for green power (windmills and solar) it is not practical it cannot survive without huge subsidies, why? well if you carryout a proper analysis, you will find that the energy return on the energy invested, is such a low ratio that when you add the investment on back up generation (for when the wind does not blow or the sun shine) and the extra transmission lines needed the amount of energy returned is not a lot more than the energy invested in it.
Global warming is just not happening, contrary to what everybody tells you, temperatures are not rising (18yrs now) global sea ice is at average extent, Antarctic sea ice is at record high amounts, hurricanes tornadoes and wild fires, are lower than average, sea levels are rising at 6 inches for every 100yrs and slowing, while this is not proof it is a pretty good indication that it is not a serious situation and rushing into extreme actions to stop something that is not yet happening is a pretty foolish thing to do....Show more

'm a very green person and do believe in global warming, but I keep talking to people who don't believe it and I need some evidence to help support?
15 answers · Global Warming · 7 hours ago...Show more

Instead of looking for evidence to support anthropogenic global warming, you should look at the evidence as a whole and try to determine if you think our CO2 emissions are causing significant harm. That is one of the dirty little tricks that alarmists pull on the gullible (actually most alarmists are also gullible so I don't mean to sound like they are purposefully fooling you). They want you to equate any warming with harmful catastrophic warming that needs their political agenda as a solution. In fact, there is very little evidence that our CO2 emissions have caused harmful warming. The warming in the last hundred years is about the same as it was in the previous 100 years. Crops are growing at record levels. More and more people are becoming prosperous and living good lives....Show more

Scientific sources like NASA and the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change bring together the scientific evidence.
http://www.ipcc.ch
http://climate.nasa.gov

The consensus among publishing climate scientists that most of the recent global warming is man-made is somewhere around 97%.
http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/8/2/024024/article

An excellent blog that summarises this evidence is skepticalscience
http://www.skepticalscience.com/big-picture.html

You should never just trust a blog, because there's a load of rubbish out there. Scientists filter rubbish by using the peer-reviewed literature: studies can't be published unless they've been checked by anonymous experts to filter out the stupidest mistakes. These studies are continually tested by new experiments later on.

Skepticalscience is good because it links constantly to scientific studies in the peer-reviewed literature. This is a sign of reliability.

A sign of unreliability would be working for a group like the Heartland Institute, a PR group that is paid to spread sciency-sounding information to try and prevent laws that might cost its clients any money. Previously they were paid by tobacco companies to deny that smoking causes cancer, and now they're paid by other groups to deny that humans are causing global warming. There are dozens of these groups, with clever-sounding names such as the "Global Warming Policy Foundation" or the "Friends of Science". Their glossy brochures or blog posts are not reliable sources of information. If someone is confident that their work is reliable, they submit it to a proper scientific journal for testing.

At least, that's how I approach science, and I'm a climate scientist....Show more