Originally Posted by engineerdude
Hi everybody,
I consider myself to be a life-long environmentalist. I have, in my own small ways, worked against aerosols, acid rain, general pollution, and of late Co2/Global Warming.
As a dad and a science-oriented person, I have always been able to logically explain scientific things to my kids. I have explained how optics work via experiments, illustrated Darwinian evolution via fossil records, I've mixed my baking soda and vinegar a dozen times.
To the point, I have not been able to explain man-made global warming to my eldest, 10 year old daughter. I simply can't find a shred of basic evidence that shows that carbon dioxide levels have any effect on how warm our planet is. I'm getting a little desperate.
I searched the most recent IPCC report. I really looked at the report for help - and there was nothing I could use. The charts of ice core samples only show Co2 follows changes in climate - not that changes in Co2 cause climate change. To me, all the report did was state the obvious - that the planet is getting warmer. Where I sit in Toledo Ohio used to be under an ice sheet a mile thick - no ice now. The earth seems to have been getting warmer for a long time, with no help from people. There were pages of calculations in the IPCC report - but I have seen pages of calculations that show just the opposite of their conclusions, and Britt my daughter wouldn't grasp the math anyways.
To top it all off, we have a small greenhouse, and Britt knows too well that greenhouses don't stay warm via "The Greenhouse Effect".
At risk is my daughter's (and to be honest my) belief in authority. My congresswoman, Britt's teacher, people in Bali, all seem to really believe that Co2 has something to do with global warming. Could the Nobel prize people really be wrong?
The earth is a complex system - maybe in a thousand years we can do math to predict the weather, but not now. I need some basic, easy to understand evidence. Please don't link me a webpage with one side's propoganda - I need some ammo here, as in "The last ice age was caused because there were too many plants which took all the Co2 out of the air, look at this data".
So, what am I missing?
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