1.) Is climate change real?
Yes. But beware the generalizations made around this term.
'Climate change' as a whole is something that's gone on during the entire age of the Earth. Virtually NO ONE disputes that the Earth's climate has varied dramatically during that time, and at different times, there have been different drivers of climate. SOME of those paleoclimate drivers are irrelevant to today's climate and Earth's climate equilibrium. But others are VERY relevant. In fact, a recent paper (can't recall the link right now) examined old rock formations and found that major volcanic eruptions many hundred million years ago released CO2 on levels on par with what we are doing today (only those eruptions lasted several thousand years). The runup in CO2 concentrations caused one of the largest mass-extinction events ever documented. So, we absolutely have evidence of climate change INCLUDING climate change caused by CO2 level variation.
2.) Are humans causing it?
The best evidence at hand indicates that the past 150 years (and perhaps even the past few thousand) have been influenced by humans. Deforestation and land-use variations were the possible drivers prior to the industrial age. (Ruddiman, 2003)
http://stephenschneider.stanford.edu/Publications/PDF_Papers/Ruddiman2003.pdf
The greenhouse effect and its understanding is a concept >100 years old (pre-dates Einstein's Theory of Relativity by about 10 years!). So, we absolutely have an understanding of how greenhouse gases and CO2 can impact the climate, and the temperature of the Earth).
Presently, there is NO 'natural' forcing (e.g. solar output, volcanic activity, gamma rays, etc) that explains the warming over the past 100-150 years. Earth has a simply MASSIVE specific heat, and to warm the entire planet up or down, you need a major change in the amount of heat flux gained or lost - it cannot simply change temperature on its own without some driving mechanism or force; much like your car cannot just start moving from rest without some force acting on it - be that gravity, wind, you pushing it, etc.
We DO know, unequivocally, that CO2 levels have jumped from 280 ppm (pre-industrial) to >400 ppm now. And we KNOW that this DOES create an imbalance in the heat re-radiated back into space (the greenhouse effect). We also know that the C in the CO2 from fossil fuels has a different isotope ratio than 'natural' carbon already in the environmental cycle. So, it is a virtual certainty that the CO2 concentration change is entirely due to us, NOT volcanic. In fact, humans emit >100x the amount of CO2 EACH YEAR than all terrestrial and sub-marine volcanoes, combined - OUR output dwarfs one of the natural sources of sub-terrestrial or sequestered carbon.
All that put together, combined with computer models, makes a very strong case (>95% certain) that our CO2 emissions are causing the current warming. And the rate with which warming is occurring is faster than about anything else in the paleoclimate record.
Worse, all the CO2 causes ocean acidification, which is the ugly stepsister of global warming. It is already causing problems for ocean organisms which need calcium carbonate shells to survive - and the bad news is that many of them are food staples at the bottom of the ocean food-chain. That means too much CO2 has the potential to wipe out lots of ocean food sources if things get too acidic.
3.) What are your scientific qualifications?
I have undergraduate mathematics and physics majors, so I have a good understanding of both the physics mechanisms as well as statistical analysis.
I also have a PhD in biomedical engineering and have done quite a bit of basic science (and product work) in medical device development. I have about a dozen and a half patents (assigned to various companies) and a few published articles (including a few unpublished works that were submitted or intended for publication until company priorities left them as 'orphans'). I've presented papers at a few medical conferences over the years as well.
I have followed climate science for probably a decade now, and have been rather astounded at many of the (woefully unscientific) assertions made on the GOP side. Politically, I am very free-market oriented and economically conservative. And it really bothers me that Republicans have turned their backs on the actual science and taken themselves out of the discussion in crafting and proposing solutions. We do NOT want a bunch of over-arching regulations 'solving' the emissions problems, we absolutely need something like Cap & Trade (OR a revenue-neutral carbon tax) coupled with WTO treaties to penalize non-participants and violators. And IMO, getting the USA on clean energy as fast as possible would put us in a great position to bring clean-energy driven production and manufacturing back here - countries that stay on fossil fuels and incur a tariff penalty would price themselves out of a properly crafted clean energy market. Some may call that solution of a tariff or tax 'anti-free market', but by ignoring the impacts that CO2 emissions are going to have long-term on our planet, we are actually subsidizing fossil fuels by giving them a 'pass'. And that isn't a 'free market', either, when the overall cost of a pollutant is ignored as part of the cost of the energy.
The additional 'upside' is that elimination of fossil fuels will ultimately require countries like Russia, Saudi Arabia and Iran to change their ways - they will not have recoverable resources for their economies to rely on in a world powered by non-fossil fuels. That means they pretty much must join the ranks of the modern western world, or they go back to the Stone Age. Our Navy won't need to place policeman in a Persian Gulf where we don't care about oil exports/imports. Shutting off the oil spigots for Saudi Arabia means the Wahhabi version of Islam won't be getting any more money from the sales of oil, either. FWIW....the Saudis were one of the main countries trying to de-rail the last round of climate talks, so the GOP has THAT in common with their position....
There are many long-term 'upsides' to clean energy than just reducing fossil fuel pollution.
