[command_codes]

Regrettably at the moment cannot parse through this entire thread but surely proponents are aware that global temperature seems to have fluctuated within historical record, and not just the Little Ice Age

Extending further, we know that paleoclimates could be radically different and have oscillated. I knew this even in elementary school

Is Earth's climate changing? Of course; and that is because of course it will. Should we tax ourselves to feel good about it? I think a dubious prospect, in light that climate already changes in absence of anthropogenic activity, therefore there must be certainty; furthermore, a tax won't even help, as massive noncompliant countries such as China industrialize

Then there is always curiously left out the consideration, now forgotten depending on your birthyear, that scientists of a recent generation were up in arms about global cooling instead

I think there is danger of a curious autism and naivete re: the trustworthiness of certain scientists - remember they are people - coupled with a kind of religious fanaticism

[conistonwater]

> Should we tax ourselves to feel good about it?

Respectfully, I think you might be entirely missing the point of why people want to do something about climate change.

> Then there is always curiously left out the consideration, now forgotten depending on your birthyear, that scientists of a recent generation were up in arms about global cooling instead

It is not forgotten, but it is untrue: see for example the discussion in The Myth of the 1970s Global Cooling Scientific Consensus (http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/2008BAMS2370.1).

[command_codes]

Climate change destroyed civilizations. Any student of history knows this, and that, without even to tease apart the mysterious circumstances of, say the Bronze Age - it is as simple as Greenland getting too cold.

The impulse just "to do" something is a religious impulse.

Global cooling is an ancillary matter; it doesn't change the point. After all, the globe really will cool sometime in the future

[pg314]

> Then there is always curiously left out the consideration, now forgotten depending on your birthyear, that scientists of a recent generation were up in arms about global cooling instead

Scientists in the past thought that the earth was flat. That doesn't mean that present scientists that believe that the earth is round are wrong.

Science evolves, usually in the direction of greater understanding.

[chris1993]

The global climate is changing faster than at any time in recent history and this will impact on society and is already affecting people in marginal regions. We have tools (taxation, among others) which can slow and perhaps stop the rate of change, so perhaps we should be using them instead of ignoring the issue and assuming/hoping that business-as-usual will work.