My whole point AP is that the answers to your questions appear to be inconclusive and not worthy of the destructive economic policy being proposed.

The real question scientists are debating is;

Is the current warming period anamolous to earth's natural climate fuxuations? And there is serious debate going on.

The very term "climate change" is ambiguous, and for good reason. Climate change in some form or another has been occuring since the formation of the planet. Also, CO2 fluxuations have been measured through ice core samples going back millions of years. The highest point of measurement during the last four ice ages being about 325,000 years ago.

Currently we are approaching high end levels that are consistent with normal fluxuations observed every 100,000-125,000 years. These current levels have been rising from their lows going back roughly 15,000 years.

Global tempuratures have also gone through cycles of fluxuation throughout the course of history. The heavily relied upon "hockey stick graph" created by Michael Mann in 1998 and made famous by Al Gore has been shown to have serious flaws.

The Mann study relied heavily upon tree ring data out of a single location in the Sierra Nevada Mountains as a basis for assessing past temperature changes from 1000-1980. They grafted the surface temperature record of the 20th century onto the pre-1980 proxy record. The result was visually dramatic. Gone were the diificult-to-explain Medieval Warming Period and the awkward Little Ice Age. Mann gave us 900 years of stable global temps until about 1910. Then the 20th century's temps seem to skyrocket out of control. A neat little trick really.

The Mann study gave carbon credit advocates the quick answer they wanted to the argument that natural climate variations exceed whatever affect human activity might have had in the 20th century by claiming, quite simply, that the biggest past historic changes in temperature simply never happened.

Is the earth warming? Yes, it has been for 15,000 years. Are CO2 levels rising. Yes, has been for roughly 15,000 years as well. Is that warming trend caused by the last 200 years of industrial activity? In my mind that is not likely.

Again, my greater point is that the science is anything but settled. Add to that the propositions made by advocates as how to solve the problem are highly destructive and point to a wider agenda.

Not exactly something I'm willing to defer to the spoon-fed reports coming from the lame-stream media and our benevolent government benefactors.