Start with something similar but easier, like convincing Ayatollah Khomeini to abandon his faith; THEN work up to persuading the AGW faithful to leave theirs. Hint - the second will be harder, as there's money involved.

Bravo! Here's a better angle from which to analyze the CO2 debate: Proponents of AGW argue that higher CO2 levels are by definition, and without proof, bad. I argue the planet is starving for CO2 and anything that increases CO2 levels will dramatically improve life for plant and animal life alike. When Earth was Created it had a given ration of carbon, but over billions of years look how much of the carbon has been sequestered where it is no longer capable of participating in the cycle of life. Limestone, marble, and dolomite incarcerate massive quantities of carbon as do seawater and the core of the planet. Undeveloped fossil fuels contain a significant percentage of Earth's accessible allocation of carbon. While releasing the carbon from minerals, seawater and earth's core would be difficult and serve no economic purpose, converting the carbon in fossil fuels (coal, oil, natural gas) to clean carbon dioxide serves a high economic purpose while restoring CO2 levels. Agricultural research has shown a direct correlation between plant growth and CO2 levels with increasing crop yields with increasing CO2 levels. Thus, both plant and animal worlds will benefit from higher CO2 levels. Thus, let us ban non-CO2 generating forms of power in order to improve life on Earth for all forms of life.

Brett,
An excellent article. I will post it on Straight Line Logic (straightlinelogic.com) later today.

Major flaw (and indeed a flaw in most anti-AGW arguments): The problem as stated by AGW theorists is HOW TO CORRECT for anthropogenic global warming. The existence of AGW is an article of faith, although expressed in scientific terminology.

See the IPCC's recent Summary for Policymakers: http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-rep...

Their governing principles state: "The role of the IPCC is to assess on a comprehensive, objective, open and transparent basis the
scientific, technical and socio-economic information relevant to understanding the scientific basis of risk of human-induced climate change, ..."

There is no likelihood that the IPCC will change their belief in AGW any more than the Catholic Church will decide to abandon belief in God.

It is probably more worthwhile to investigate the underpinnings of the whole scam. One would not be amiss by starting with critical study of the activities of the late Maurice Strong. (Yes, late, he died yesterday. Heaven occasionally grants small favors.) Strong was behind a lot of the bad things that have happened. Now that he is dead we should look to see who is his successor. These people seem to be able to shun publicity and to deflect scrutiny.

It's an interesting article that hits a lot of good points.

The issue is of course that "Carbon" has become a fanatical religion where the believers claim "the science has been settled" and demand the government arrest anyone that questions the "settled sacred science".... insert something here about "Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition"

The ones leading the wave of blind stupidity are doing it to gain power, wealth and influence...
It's practically the new version of the "original sin" doctrine... where man is born in sin "the sin of breathing out Carbon Dioxide" and must pay some xxxxx religious/government/hybrid entity some sin tax for being alive

Governments love this new religion as it gives them excuses to do their 2 favourite things... tax even more and expand their control over your life ever more harshly.

It looks more and more like the whole world is turning away from scientific enlightenment and into religious fanaticism.. Whereas in places like the middle east secular values are being destroyed in favour of one religion, in the west, true objective science, rational thought, common sense and tolerance / encouragement of intellectual debate, are being ripped out and replaced with fanatical cults of carbon worship, hybrid earth worship, & the cult of being offended by everything possible.

Even "mainstream science" is pretty much whoring themselves out to the carbon cult for money (Unfortunately academics need money and just like surveys.. the person who pays determines what comes out).
For a basic wide ranging science question that can affect a huge part of the population, almost no actual debate or honest research is allowed, on pains of being "excommunicated" from the "proper scientific community".

You can argue with the carbon zealots till your blue in the face... facts like:
Axial Tilt
Axial Precession
Solar Cycles
Geological evidence showing the earth (without any help from humans) regularly goes through deep ice ages and peak warming periods (and as a side note, plant and animal life thrives best during the warmer parts of the cycle).

But it won't help any.
The easiest analogy is trying to discuss religious freedom and human rights with the leaders of the Islamic State, or Galileo trying to reason with the inquisition that the earth actually revolves around the sun (they had their own version of "settled science")

I think in all reality we are heading away from our previous age of reason and enlightenment, into a new mini dark ages of dogma and tyranny and suppression of "incorrect thought", with a new forced demand to believe the "correct truth" and not question anything.

Note how "Denier" is bandied about much like the word "Heretic" used to be!

It probably won't be long now before it becomes illegal (or if not actually illegal, a recognized excuse to fire people and kick them out of society) to think for yourself or ask questions in regards to seasons / weather / climate / history.

And you don't have any SHARE buttons with which to share your article on Facebook, ...

I tried thrice to leave a comment on your article, to no avail. The instructions are faulty.
1. Required fields are NOT marked with an asterisk.
2. Your Captcha has TWO (2) possible answers, SEVEN and 7.
3. Refreshing the page does NOT show my comments(s).

GW Data "massively altered"?
http://notrickszone.com/2015/11/20/ge...

-11 f in California mountains yesterday. winter is solidly upon us. YES the climate is changing alright it is definitely getting colder. maybe the group in paris had their heads frozen so their brains if the have any would definitely not function.

Stuff I agree with:
The only sure-fire way to stop human effects on the earth is for humans not exist. - Yes. And there are 7 billion of us. Our needs come first, IMHO, and we must accept that we have a large environmental impact.

if you favor a solution that is fundamentally incompatible with human life or human prosperity, you are not doing yourself (or the rest of us) any favors. - Yes. Going to a “Little-House-on-the-Prarie” lifestyle would help the problem, but the “solution” would be worse than the problem since most people do not want to live a per-industrial existence. More importantly, we have no right to demand people live that way.

But with creativity, resourcefulness, innovation, and technology, we can certainly deal with a few degrees of temperature change or few inches (even feet) of water level change over decades or centuries. – Yes. The most efficient answer might not be reducing CO2 emissions. Rising water and changing climate is expensive, but maybe not so much as stopping burning stuff. Maybe we should, as you suggest, find ways to mitigate the effects of climate change. Maybe we could something to increase the albedo of the earth. There are all kinds of approaches.

Pareto principle probably applies. Yes. 80% of the solution will likely come from 20% of the efforts.

“If there is a genuine, urgent, and major problem, let’s not f__ around about it.” Yes!!

“Don’t fall for the sloppy thinking or hyperbole that OUR WORLD IS THREATENED BY CLIMATE CHANGE!... the context that really matters–is the effect (if any) of these changes on HUMAN LIFE.” Yes! Our world will be just fine. It doesn't have desires and interests. Human beings do.

“HUMAN LIFE must be the standard by which we evaluate the impact, the risk, and the effectiveness of any actions we take.” Yes!! The whole point, at least for me, is sentient beings selfishly (in the AR sense, not the greedy criminal sense) pursuing happiness.

Thanks for writing/posting the article. I read all 3,300 words. I agree with much of it, but this comment will focus on the parts I disagree with. So here come my 3,300 words. :) :)

Debate/Controversy/Argument – You use this language in the title and in the article. There is no debate. There's reality and what we wish were reality. The reality is the scientific evidence is that the anthropogenic component to climate change is real and will be costly to future generations. This might turn out to be wrong. It might be like the science that indicated butter was unhealthful and margarine was a healthful but less tasty alternative. The current scientific opinion is that butter is healthful and margarine poses health risks. That could happen with anything: new data could reveal what we thought was true was false and what we wish were true was true. But we cannot count on wishful thinking. It's like creationists saying “teach the controversy about evolution.” There is no controversy. Science loves surprising new evidence, but we're not getting any at this time. Evolution appears to be real, despite what people may want. AGW appears to be a real problem for humankind, despite what most of the human race wants.

Appeal to authority and appeal to consensus - If we call using scientific opinion appeal to authority or consensus, then we can know nothing outside our own area of expertise. When my parents get sick and go through books and read the abstracts of journal articles to understand the pathophysiology and interventions, do I really know what scientific opinion is. I don't even dig beyond the abstracts. How can I know it's not all a scam? I don't. I accept that human knowledge is limited. But I read the journals abstracts anyway to gain an understanding of what modern medical scientific opinion (i.e. the “consensus” of “authorities” that peer review articles). I really wish it were all a scam, and some painless homeopathic remedy would work better, but the big pharma is suppressing it. We all wish that. And scientific-minded people know it's untrue.

CO2 is a small fraction of the atmosphere. - I do not understand the relevance. Na+ ions are a small part of the human body but a slight imbalance can be deadly. It does not matter that they're a tiny faction of the body.

CO2 does not have a high specific heat compared to other atmospheric gases. - Greenhouse gasses, to my lay understanding, affect climate by reducing radiational cooling, not by changing the thermal mass of the atmosphere. I agree that claims that slight changes in the atmospheric composition affect the thermal mass of the atmosphere enough to affect climate are extremely counter-intuitive and would require extraordinary evidence.

The net surplus of CO2 in the atmosphere per year is 12 Gtons, while the atmosphere contains 730 Gtons of CO2. - The trouble with this is the surplus we run every year adds up.

Human life is based on carbon, so a tax on carbon is a tax on life. - CO2 output from human life is insignificant next to CO2 output from suddenly (over a few hundred years) releasing carbon (in the form of hydrocarbon --> H2O + CO2 + energy) that took hundreds of millions of years of energy from the sun to get stored.

I'll try to post some of the items I agree on next. I owe that after slamming all the things I disagree with.

Good work, Brett. If you get any replies with additional pertinent scientific data, would you please share them here in the Gulch, too?
Thanks +1