I cant speak for all scientists, but they don't
believe in Climate Change as if you need faith like, say, with religion, or Santa. They accept the evidence and the conclusions from hundreds of experiments. I don't
believe the moon affects the tides on earth, I understand and accept the evidence that it does.
1) When exactly did you shift from being a climate sceptic to believer?
When? Couldn't tell you. I don't remember an exact point in time. There would have been a build up of information before I accepted and understood the evidence.
2) What specific evidence persuaded you?
This one I can answer, and there's plenty.
First, there's some simple physics.
The sun emits short wave radiation that passes through out atmosphere (which is made up of Nitrogen, Oxygen, and some CO2, Methane, and some other gases). The radiation hits the earth, converts to long wave radiation, bounces up and some is absorbed by the CO2 and Methane, they vibrate, and heat up. This was established in the late 1800's, but here's a major paper from the 1950's with the same conclusion By the way, you can do this experiment yourself at home, it isn't particularly difficult. (
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.2153-3490.1956.tb01206.x)
So, we know that Carbon Dioxide, (and other greenhouse gasses), what's next? We know the climate on earth has always changed, whats different?
Well, yes, the climate has changed in the past, you'll hear sceptics say "The climates always changed!!" Its true! we've gone from snowball earth to hothouses, that's huge climate change and there were no humans to emit CO2! But it was CO2 back then that played a major roll in that climate change. The only difference was that it took hundreds of thousands, or millions of years for the earth to experience, lets say, 10 degree C changes in temp. Over hundreds of thousands of years Volcanic eruptions, pumped billions of tonnes into the atmosphere and there were rainforests at the poles! The earth reached an equilibrium, and eventually the ocean, chemical weathering, and other natural processes absorbed CO2 (over hundreds of thousands of years) and the earth went into snowball earth. Again, this took hundreds of thousands/million of years. Remember this, because the current change we are observing is happening over the time scale of decades. (
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1046/j.1365-3121.2002.00408.x,
https://pubs.geoscienceworld.org/gsa/geology/article-abstract/36/1/47/130001/Scenario-for-the-evolution-of-atmospheric-pCO2)
You'll notice that graph and link I posted yesterday shows correlation between CO2, solar output, and global temperatures. You'll notice in the link that there is no correlation between solar output and global temperatures, but it would be ridiculous to say that the sun has no effect on the earths temperature? but there is also no correlation between CO2 and global temperatures too! but when you combine CO2 and solar output, you get a very good correlation with global temperatures.
Anyway, lets start with those points. Please put any scientific articles to support the information you source as well so I can confirm and check.
Cheers,
(20min delay)