Ok, I’m tired of being clueless about global warming. Tired.

I’ve been roughly 90% convinced of man-made global warming for years now, but I occasionally see information that convinces me there’s less to it than many would have us believe.

At one point last year I saw some data that made me say something like, “This data makes me question my belief in global warming.”

One reader showed up and scolded my ass. He was like, “If that was all that it took to convince you that global warming was false, then we can’t possibly respect your view in support of it either.”

That’s paraphrased, but the point is completely valid.

I don’t want to to rely on experts; I want to become one…even if just to a minor degree. I want to get to where I interpret the data itself and not rely on someone else’s interpretation.

I need to be able to build my OWN argument for man-made global warming rather than do the famous “appeal to authority” maneuver. Another goal of mine is to be able to do this with evolution as well.

These are two goals of mine: be able to explain, in my own words, why I believe (with evidence) that man-made global warming and evolution are real.

Do you agree? Have you done the same already? Do you have your own arguments for these topics or do you also appeal to an authority? Why or why not?

In science, one of the most elusive issues is that of causation vs. corelation. In other words, how do we know if a actually caused b, or if a and b just happened to be going on at the same time in a seemingly related fashion?

An interesting article at National Geographic is claiming this is what’s going on with global warming. In short, the argument is that increased solar output is to blame for the recent heatup — and not greenhouse gasses.

So while they agree that greenhouse gasses do increase heat, they’re saying it can’t account for near as much as what the sun could do with just a marginal increase in output. Makes sense to me. But the really compelling part is the fact that the ice cap on Mars has seen increased melting for three summers in a row — just like ours — a fact that’s obviously not related to our stupidity.

On one hand I’d be happy to find out we aren’t causing this problem, but on the other I’m afraid we still are, and that this will cause many people who were considering solid environmental programs to abandon them. They’ll basically just say…”Eh…turns out it wasn’t us afterall…crank up the coal plant, Bob!”

I look forward to seeing more debate given this new information.

(Thanks to Ken for bookmarking the article)