IS there any kind of evidence of how much more retained heat the Earth now possesses, as opposed to the past?
I'm saying this because, well, I'm a skeptic. Not because a party says I should be, or because I refuse to believe whatever. What I never see is what I intuitively grasp is the essence of the global warming thing - not a measure of temperatures, or rates of melt-off of glaciers or oceans rising or increase in CO2 levels - but an actual measure of the amount of heat retained however briefly, by the Earth?
I mean this in earnest. When I get into discussions on the topic, the moment it's understood that I'm skeptical, most of the verbiage coming my way is just insults without any sort of reasoning or data. OR - I get a LOT of data that doesn't really tell me what I really want to see, which is a quantifiable measure of our industrial output of gases and the amount of heat retained before it is inevitably lost to space.
I can see most of the climate change arguments, and some of them are rational. What I don't see is:
1. A policy that we unilaterally can do to effect ANY change in things like CO2 emissions. For instance, it doesn't do industrialized nations ANY good to incur a HUGE cost to reduce emissions if other nations either do not comply or are free to NEVER comply. It's like digging a hole and someone else is just filling it in at the same time.
2. Any technology that would measurably reverse or mitigate the measured change in climate. Basically, I don't see that we can do much to stop it.
3. Point for point proof of increased industrial output causing the change. What I do see is many data points trending alike - I do not see data showing this causes this. Because if it were so, we could guess what the data will be next year - and we can't seem to do that.
..and so on. I am skeptical - but I am willing to believe the reasoning is sound. It doesn't seem like science at all if predictions NEVER come true, or are never in the ballpark of what actually happens.
I don't believe we're having no effect on the world, but my gut still says our contribution is far too small to make that much of a difference. To me it's like me peeing in the ocean and raising ocean levels - I am sure it affects it SOMEWHAT, but not significantly.