This kind of thinking is becoming the norm

Well, this is absurd. It is the human era that we are concerned with. We have ice core records going back thousands of years, well before the dawn of the industrial age, well before the age of human agriculture, in fact, because deforestation is one of the contributors to carbon increases. The consensus of opinion using the best available records is that the steep curve absolutely correlates with the human industrial era. It's not just temperature data, but satellite data, radiosondes, ice borehole analysis, glacial melt observations, sea ice melt, sea level rise, and permafrost melt.

The Idso's are prominent skeptics of global warming and their Institute is funded by the Heartland foundation which definitely has an agenda. Scientific dissent is good and a normal thing which helps science test itself. But the overwhelming consensus of experts disagree with them. You should trust the consensus over the dissenters.

Only he offers no proof to support this notion. The fossil record actually does not tell us that no extremes have occurred. In fact there have been several great global extinctions where almost all life has been lost. It also ignores the fact that while natural systems have ebb and flow to achieve overall equilibrium in geologic time, the rapid human-caused increase in temperature cannot count on a natural process to somehow arise to counter it. It is a pipe dream.

 

There is a very important distinction to be made between water vapor’s role in the Earth’s Greenhouse effect and it’s role in climate change. H2O in the troposphere is a feedback effect, it is not a forcing agent. Simply put, any artificial perturbation in water vapour concentrations is too short lived to change the climate. Too much in the air will quickly rain out, not enough and the abundant ocean surface will provide the difference via evaporation. But once the air is warmed by other means, H2O concentrations will rise and stay high, thus providing the feedback. Try reading this article at Real Climate.Org.

 

Well, the topic is anthropogenic global warming, so it can only occur in the human era and under the conditions existing in it. We simply have no hard and reliable climate evidence beyond the ice cores. Moreover, it is not the welfare of the planet that we worry about, it is the welfare of the current environment, which is conducive to human life and the flora and fauna that we need to survive in this slice of geologic time.

More questions that have long and complicated answers. What are you trying to suggest exactly and we can cut to the chase.

Why do you imagine this? There have been thousands of scientific papers written on the topic. The IPCC report itself is a giant compendium of this research. Climatologists have spent entire careers studying it. The existence of AGW is a scientific issue. Denial of AGW is denial of proper scientific methods.

Now, the recommendations on what should be done to deal with the problem range from nothing at all, to simple and affordable steps, to complex and expensive solutions, to pie-in-the-sky fantasies. These are socio-political issues. It is not necessary to deny global warming to disagree with steps need to address the problem.

As I have said many times . . .

1. we should take some action . . . doing nothing solves nothing.
2. we should immediately do the simple and cheap steps . . . like converting coal powered plants to natural gas and building more wind farms.
3. we should consider carefully the complex and expensive solutions and only do the ones that are economically feasible, like cap and trade, which can be adjusted for optimal balance between effectiveness and cost . . . and don't do the bank-breaking ones, like going totally nuclear for power generation.
4. we should not even consider the fantasy solutions . . . like a total ban on fossil fuels, cold fusion anticipation, or a reversion to an Amish lifestyle.

Such studies exist and the IPCC report is the biggest and most credible. Here is a more concise article without as much technical jargon.

Remember it is not just about a warmer earth but the rapid pace of AGW.

 

We have been fracking for decades. Sometimes it causes problems, so we don't frack those areas. And we don't have to strip mine so much.

WHy? It is their job to be the watchdog.

EPA is controlled by the Congress that you elect. Cap and trade has been proven to work before with sulfur emissions without hurting business. It will do the same with Carbon. It is infinitely adjustable.

That only apples to new plants, most of which will be using natural gas anyway. Plants existing or under construction are exempt.

Only because there are more plants. Natural gas is cheaper, more efficient, and cleaner than coal.

 

Every President has.

This is the best reason to advocate cap and trade. Under C&T, those plants would not have to shut down. They could buy carbon credits from the cleaner, greener natural gas plants and wind farms which encourages the green plants to get even cleaner to have more credits to sell. Meanwhile the dirty old, inefficient coal plants get to keep operating, buying them the time needed to upgrade to more efficient modern plants or to convert to cleaner natural gas.

It is a simple system, neither complex, costly, nor prone to fraud or political favoritism.

Two Key Points:

1. We know that it works from our successful efforts to scrub sulphur from the air to combat the Acid Rain issue of the 70's. It can also work with carbon emissions.
2. C&T is flexible and adjustable. The cap is not a fixed point, but a balance point that can be adjusted over time to achieve the optimum goals of lower carbon output while sustaining adequate power needs. If companies are impacted too seriously, the cap can be raised. If companies rapidly convert to more efficient plants, then the cap can be lowered and eventually eliminated when all plants meet the goals.