Is it not obvious [to you] that man-made temperature changes (there are both heating and cooling effects) are so miniscule compared to the natural changes occurring daily that it is preposterous to propose to handicap all societies for practically unmeasurable effects (and we're not even sure if those effects are good or bad, heating or cooling)? In fact, the only measurable effect is the money transfer that this issue enables.

There is no debate. A debate assumes an interchange of ideas, backed by facts, among people that are capable of understanding those facts and willing to alter their opinion based on new information. What we have is one side trying to present facts, with the other side incapable of understanding those facts and not willing to budge from their dogma. It is no different from a physics PhD "arguing" with a nine-year old who wants his broken toy magically restored.

So, all the debate about CO2 physics aside, consider this. The models they paly with, and comparisons to "old times" are not worth spit. Several reasons:
1. There are now something like 7 Billion humans on the planet, each one respirates Co2.
2. There is unprecedented deforestation, especially in the main carbon sink of the world, the Amazon basin.
3. In between glaciations, there is a rise in Co2 which would seem counter intuitive in respect to the fact plant growth should be a maximum, so it should eat all that up.
4. There are a lot, lot of animals in the world today raised for food, all of whom respirate. This may, or may not equal the previous wild populations, but that is yet another variable.
5. There is some evidence for solar activity in a cyclical form to also cause warming and to change the whole "energy budget" of the planet.
6. There are oceanic changes to currents and life zones due to changes in climate that also have contributed to more or less absorption of C02.

I have never seen any "complete" model that takes all these issues into account, and then add in the human output of Co2 in industrial applications. All I see is people making vaugue statements about climate change and want to blame humans above all else, and never produce a complete package of ALL factors and how they fit. It may very well be that our "little" contribution is meaningless in the whole cycle, or may be huge, but my bone is that no one wants to really explain the full picture, when it seems all they are doing is providing political justification for rules, regulations and money. Seems like there are a lot of questions unanswered.

If you mean denying the need for spending of money to pretend to defeat global warming is proper, then I agree with you. Otherwise, there is nothing to deny about something that is unimportant and comes and goes in cycles with global cooling. I do not deny that weather changes and therefore weather patterns in geographical areas tend to change.

Who is damaging other people's property other than those who are causing destruction by pretending that something must be done about global warming or some kind of climate change?

+1 as to offset the down vote you got and because of your mention of the ilegal geoengineering that is flying the friendly skies near you.

Drawbacks more serious? Oh like the recent California drought that Proved global warming.
Or the record crop yields that have occurred in the previous 4 years. When global warming predictors started in the late eighties Miami was to be 5 feet under water by 2010.

With the sun in grand solar minimum we will be lucky if we can warm the planet in a couple of years. The temperature data and ice loss data
Is know to be falsified by NOAA and the IPCC.
The real power is the electromagnetic interaction with the sun and the planets. The weather on this planet has fluctuated widely
In the past and will do so in the future and there is little we can do about it. After a period of heavy sunspot activity and several years of rising temps coinciding the sunspots are starting to be scarce. You think we are warming and I think we are cooling, that's the bottom line.

" causing much distressing emotion and thus large amounts of name calling, spending,"
The emotional distress, name-calling, and gov't wasteful spending are all irrelevant to the issue of damaging other people's property.

"There is nothing to deny about something as unimportant as global warming"
It's trillions of dollars of loss to the people affect over the next 100 years. To people who don't mind trashing other people's stuff, it's unimportant.

What drawbacks and why are they serious? Just a lot of speculation from some mental mathematical and emotional fear. Where do you get you fear from? Most wildlife is doing fine, especially those cuddly polar bears, with hardly any extinctions being recorded. The Earth, itself, not being a living thing, cannot be hurt. Life goes on, changing to the better when governments stick to the minor roles that they should have.

H2O is a much stronger GHG and is several percent of the atmosphere compared to a lesser GHG, CO2, at 0.04%. Besides, H2O's latent heat of evaporation is a major means of removing heat from the land and water and then out of the lower atmosphere through radiation from condensation.

Yes, H2O vapour is also a GHG, but its levels are controlled by the weather (evaporation and cloud formation) not by humans. CO2 is being influenced by humans.
Yes, it is true that plants will have faster growth with higher CO2 but it is slight, and yield increase from other technologies will far outweight that slight advantage. The drawbacks are far more serious.

Is there some reality that is being denied other than that climate is nothing other than local averaging of weather patterns. Climate is a mathematical object residing in human brains and, depending upon the brain, causing much distressing emotion and thus large amounts of name calling, spending, and other horror in those who believe that math is reifiable.

Dobrien, the explanation for climate change is so simple (increased CO2 absorbing more IR radiated from Earth surface). You would think that if this was in fact incorrect, it could be so simple to refute. Simply stating it has been "critically scrutinized" does not reassure me. Any simple refutation would reassure me, but nobody has ever given one.
Instead, all we see is vaguely worded unspecific explanations of "alternative concepts", trying to make it sound more complex than it is.
The CO2 levels are simple to measure. The annual increase in atmospheric CO2 tonnage is currently about 1/3 of annual fossil fuel contribution. The other 2/3 is absorbed into one or all of the natural carbon cycles. If we continue at the same rate, we should expect the levels to continue to increase by about 1/3 of that rate. We should expect that higher level to have the unrefuted effect on average temperature and therefore sea levels.
It is so disappointing that so much effort is put into discrediting the cause and effect, by the very group of people who would be the best ones to work out a good free market solution to the problem. Instead we are left with the socialized solutions being forced on us by western governments.

There has not been a doubling of CO2.
If it is 450 ppbv up from 280 ppmv then it has increased by about 60% and since its affects are logarithmic most of the temperature effects have already occurred in the less than one degree C in the last century plus. But the measurements of CO2 vary greatly with an average nearer 400 ppmv.
There is nothing to deny about something as unimportant as global warming except possibly the self caused mental distress from the inability of dealing multi-decades in the future with human inability to make changes in their lives such as not building in flood planes or trying to farm in arid areas.

Here is one problem with CO2 being the main absorber of heat and then heating the atmosphere. There is one molecule of CO2 to 2500 molecules of air. The N2, O2, and Ar do not absorb well and must be heated by either conduction from the surface or (leaving out the heating from H2O) by heat transfer from CO2. Also, CO2 is a linear molecule which gives it some difficulty with absorbing and emitting radiation unlike H2O which is a polar molecule and which can absorb well and then transfer heat to the other atmosphere components as well as radiate energy out of the lower atmosphere. The temperature of the atmosphere is the result of the motions of all the air particles and not just to the motion of CO2 and its radiation. Since the atmosphere without CO2 and H2O would have a hard time to remove energy due to conduction from the ground, the greenhouse gases are most likely needed to radiate heat energy from the atmosphere to outer space.
If any control of CO2 is done it should increased per volume since it is quite low for plants which evolved when CO2 was more than ten times more abundant. They are the most abundant plant species. As atmospheric CO2 percentage decreased some other photosynthesis processes evolved which can better use CO2 at present levels but if one wishes to feed increasing human populations in the future, more atmospheric CO2 will be greatly needed.

We have critically scrutinized this cycle and present an alternative concept, for which the uptake of CO2 by natural sinks scales proportional with the CO2 concentration. In addition,we consider temperature dependent natural emission and absorption rates, by which the paleo-climatic CO2 variations and the actual CO2 growth rate canwell be explained. The anthropogenic contribution to the actual CO2 concentration is found to be 4.3%, its fraction to the CO2 increase over the Industrial Era is 15% and the average residence time 4 years.

Nat Geog magazine published a map showing "what if" all ice melted. The max possible rise in sea level is 216ft from today, allowing for coastal topography. They said this could be the end result from fossil fuel use, but I don't think that is possible. It has happened before, but only with massive extra CO2 from volcanism which is unlikely again. My opinion is the maximum fossil fuel effect will be a lot less than that, as I would not expect to lose all continental ice.
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/mag...

Political Science is an oxymoron. No such thing.

Like measuring the depth on the ocean 3000 years ago or the temperature on August 16, 2105 BC.

I recently read a good book on this subject:
https://www.amazon.com/Scientists-Dis...

Nor does CO2. Heat still rises and cold still falls which is also basic physics. Doesn't make any difference if it is 2 feet off the ground or 10,000.

I'm not interested in one ultra-short-term (single year) movement against the logical trend. I'm interested in the paleo trend. Do you have any thoughts on why the paleo correlation might not apply today?

CO2 was shown to absorb IR radiation in the 1800s. Each photon absorbed is translated into heat. Energy cannot be destroyed.

CO2 only sinks in very calm local conditions (like your drain example). In the lower atmosphere (biosphere levels) it is well mixed with the other gases. But mixing is irrelevant to the IR absorption anyway.

The temperature falls as the air pressure decreases. As you get to the upper layers of the atmosphere there is almost no air, and so almost no heat. It is basic physics, it has nothing to do with climate.

Sorry, but I don't see that "compliance" with the liars as the only alternative to denying climate change.

If there were a fully free market solution to the problem (something based on well functioning property rights), then it would result in little damage to the economy or to the individual IF IT TURNS OUT there is not really a climate problem. The fact we are only given the socialized solution by the evil liars does NOT logically mean we do NOT have an actual climate problem. When we get rid of that blind spot, maybe we will have a chance of finding that free market solution.

There are two completely separate questions (a) will fossil fuels cause a damaging increase in sea level? (b) what is the best way to deal with that?
If we just insist the answer to (a) is "No", despite any evidence, then our answer to (b) cannot be taken seriously. I prefer to say Yes to (a), then I am justified protesting the socialized solutions being forced on us.