What's the most convincing piece of data showing climate change is real?

The history of the planet?

It being nearly 20 degrees Celsius in Antarctica this week?

I guess the significantly less amount of ice remaining in the north pole compared to 30 years ago.

Actually I have nothing. Any statistic I can provide will not be in any way relevant to the history of the world. I could tell you the generic increase in storms, increasing temperatures and the latest readings from Antarctica but this is all completely out of context and can only be compared to the past few years.

I guess any significant change in temperature will always be stumped by historical readings - it's never been as cold as it was during the ice age, and we still don't know what caused that.

I would however say that I think there's a lot of merit to climate change discussions, we are seeing some increases, but it has happened in the past. Climate change has itself changed to encompass overfishing, increases in storms and a variety of other things no longer to do with just temperatures. Humans are responsible for a lot of it, but not all. And certainly a lot of these changes have nothing to do with green house emissions, we still need a lot more research.

I was skeptical enough, but I did a bit of research myself and the correlation between the industrialisation of the planet and the rate of change in temperature and CO2 levels versus the historical rates of change evident in ice cores is undeniable.

The one piece of evidence I would point to is the change in temperature, oxygen levels and salination of the oceans, its too great to be denied or ignored.

I presume climate change is happening, but only because of people like Professor John Sweeney who seem to have studied it a lot and come to that conclusion.
It is awful that people who haven’t a clue about it no more than myself start lecturing others about it on the basis of a book they read or something they saw on TV.
The country is losing its way over the environment. Men in court for cutting turf today, but virtue signallers like Eamon Ryan lecture everyone despite taking unnecessary flights and driving 2.5 litre vehicles. Mad, Ted.
https://amp.independent.ie/irish-news/election-2020/ill-put-my-hands-up-i-went-to-climate-summit-in-spain-by-plane-green-party-leader-eamon-ryan-38874076.html

Deleted User wrote: »

So, no complicated facts or data, just a nice word picture for you, . Do you want us to sing you a lullaby about climate change ?

This attitude definitely doesn't help anyone.

As previously stated, it can be summarized to a sinusoidal graph. It has its peaks and its lows. Its nodes and anti-nodes. Its crests and troughs.

This is how temperature has been changing over time, and it's natural. We can't necessarily say that it's as a result of carbon emissions or as a result of our distance to the sun. We are in constant orbit and the earth's positions to the sun is never a constant, and it is always changing. Some centuries we will move significantly closer, other centuries significantly farther away.

The real thing we should accept is that renewable electricity and caring for the environment is important. Whether climate change is really happening or not is irrelevant to this point; it's for the scientists to argue and they still continue to argue over this. We still haven't convinced all of the top scientists that this is true. Part of science is to question and I welcome OP's curiosity and his willingness to question even the most solidified of opinions in society. And he's right, it is no longer the truth that we once thought it to be. Recent research in recent years has indicated a plethora of alternative reasons for the warming of our oceans and we are still investigating this. Only time will tell, but until then we will make the basic changes needed, such as moving to electric cars, which is a productive and progressive decision which will actually benefit us financially, and could potentially help the environment if fossil fuels really are causing so much damage.

For an interesting scientific read, and the source of the above image, check out: https://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/last_400k_yrs.html

"Interestingly, CO2 lags an average of about 800 years behind the temperature changes-- confirming that CO2 is not the cause of the temperature increases. One thing is certain-- earth's climate has been warming and cooling on it's own for at least the last 400,000 years, as the data below show. At year 18,000 and counting in our current interglacial vacation from the Ice Age, we may be due-- some say overdue-- for return to another icehouse climate!"