I'm not an alarmist by any means, but the Earth is indeed warming. Climate change is a real thing. 14 of the last 15 years have been the hottest average global temperatures on record. The chance that that is just a coincidence is less than 1 divided by all of the stars in the universe.
You should probably be made aware that the graph starting this thread shows that your punitive carbon tax would have little to no affect on global temperatures. I don't thinks it's even in dispute that a punitive carbon tax would have a devastating effect on the US economy.
Are we just buying a 4 balloon average and 2 satellite average with no reference as indisputable evidence now? For one, the graph below paints a much more accurate representation.
Note:
The global mean annual temperature deviations are in the source in relation to the base period 1961-1990. The annual deviations shown in the chart have been adjusted to be relative to the period 1850-1899 to better monitor the EU objective not to exceed 2 oC above preindustrial values. Over Europe average annual temperatures during the real preindustrial period (1750-1799) were very similar to those during 1850-1899.Of course the models are wrong! As someone who works with multivariate modeling techniques...ALL MODELS ARE WRONG. Yet, SOME ARE USEFUL! To imply the models being wrong as evidence to the contrary is just a sign that you misunderstand the statistical analysis. Also, we can argue all day about
pre-historic temperatures. No one will deny their existence and relatively high values. What will be argued is this significance to the current debate. It's all about rate of change and ecosystem adaptation. Using these values out of current context is an obfuscation technique used to separate the real issue: current potential of human-dependent ecosystem collapse from too rapid of change. Change that, no matter the dispute on degree, is impacted by human actions. Only someone with a sophomoric understanding of organic chemistry and the magnitude of our impact on the carbon cycle would deny this influence.
To add, in 2006 Evans and Puckrin showed that the heat signatures responsible for the increase in temp was largely due to CO2, with additonal influence from other man-influenced gasses such as CFCs (
https://ams.confex.com/ams/Annual2006/techprogram/paper_100737.htm). Right there is the empirical evidence for warming from organic and inorganic compounds largely increased in atmospheric concentrations from human actions. Yet, continue to ignorantly debate based on some misunderstanding or appeal to statistical or sampling error without comprehension of the methods themselves.
The issue that people cling to is, "it's been warmer in the distant past". Yeah, but not when we were rough ridin' here in a globalized, modern economic society that has 7+ billion people to support! Such a rapid change creates a selective pressure on ecosystems that would not be beneficial for man-kind! Why would you want to speed that process up? It's going to happen, but why would you speed it up by a factor of several thousand? It's like a gas leak...a slow, tiny one would not even be felt (the rate of change is so small that acclimatization would be stress-free), but crank that bitch up 10,000 times and now you have an issue.
