The blocking and delaying of any action is really infuriating. Nothing changes because there is a "debate". The debate is moronic and isn't actually a debate at all.

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You should tell NASA about this, they and nearly 200 worldwide scientific organizations will be flabbergasted they got it so wrong. Good thing we have a conservative news and opinion site set up by Tucker Carlson to set them straight.

http://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus/

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Amateur videos on you tube by guys who clearly haven't read or understood the scientific journal articles on the subject are part of the problem and confusion.

The point of recycling is to reduce energy use and transportation in manufacturing materials... So yeah, it's part of the solution and not to be thrown away.

Yes, the plant is warming, and scientists are agreed on that.
Yes, humans are adding significant CO2 to the atmosphere which contributes to warming.
What is the severity of the warming over the next 100 years, and what difference do our actions today make, and what cost do those actions have?

See the first 2 points are agreed and help understand some of the problem. The trick though is that the severity is still known with less certainty, read the details in the latest IPCC AR5 report if you doubt me. The error bars within the scenarios(different carbon emissions we reduce or increase to) span multiple degrees of temperature. The error bars are only as accurate as the current days models, which still are uncertain of the sign to attribute to water vapor as a feedback. The water vapor that contributes more to the greenhouse effect than all other GHG's combined. How great is the economic cost of reducing our emissions to meet each scenario? That's no in the IPCC report. What is the alternative cost of adapting to the temperature ranges if we just continue emitting? Again not there.

The trouble is there DOES still exist uncertainty on a great many aspects of the problem. Random amateurs proclaiming otherwise on youtube doesn't change that. Until we've got a good grasp on the cost/benefit differences between reducing emissions and adapting to changes, we can't make any claims on action X is obvious because of climate change.

Now, I'm not advocating we do nothing. Electric cars are a huge opportunity, and the technology is finally hitting the threshold of being cheaper than gas. Adopting that technology makes economic sense. A fringe benefit is that it reduces emissions from transportation drastically too.

There are solutions other than redistribution of wealth through naive/blind carbon taxes.

I'm wondering how long you've believed that there is climate change going on? Also, could you explain your comment on redistribution of wealth? Thanks.

Not sure of the relevance of how long I've "believed" there is climate change happening? I'd argue as just another laymen nobody should be putting any stock in my opinion based on my credentials in any way. Compare what I say is in the actual IPCC reports, to what is actually and honestly in them for yourself instead. To the strict and bare question, I don't really know how long, more than a decade though to be sure.

Wealth redistribution is basically any form of taxation. Moving money from entity X to entity Y for justification Z.

I used to be a pretty strong "doubter", if not a denier. I made a gradual shift away from that, but one strong instance of shift was when Neil Degrasse Tyson presented it as a (relatively) simple physics problem in his new Cosmos series. Before we started burning fossil fuels, x% of the sun's energy was reflected back into space. Now, with a higher concentration of CO2, x is a smaller number. That energy has to go somewhere, and at least some of that is going to be heat energy.

Still, I don't think that anything on the level of "average individual citizen/household of an industrial country" is really where anything needs to happen. Yes, collectively, normal people in their daily lives contribute to Climate Change. But the vast majority of us, even as a collective single unit, contribute less than industrial / government / infrastructure sources.

Fossil fuels have been a great source of energy that has massively contributed to global advances in the past century. BUT, although we didn't know it in the beginning, they have this associated cost/downside. Fossil fuels also have a weakness in that they are not by any means inexhaustible, and costs rise as that becomes more and more obvious. In turn, that tends to favor the status quo in terms of the hierarchy of industrial nations versus developing or 3rd world countries -- we've already got the money and infrastructure in place to use fossil fuels, developing countries can't afford the costs.

All of this makes me think that 2 things need to happen:
A) Governments need to encourage the development of energy sources etc. that move us away from using fossil fuels. Tax breaks to Tesla Motors, tax incentives to buyers of solar cells for their homes, etc. etc.
B) If scientists/pundits/whoever really want people to stop using fossil fuels (or just cut down), they need to develop realistic alternatives. I'll bring up Tesla Motors again for deserving huge kudos in this area. Americans (and in general citizens of developed countries) have certain expectations about how a car should perform. Electric cars have traditionally been greatly inferior to a car burning fossil fuels in terms of living up to those expectations, but Tesla threw all that out the window and made a car that car people actually like to drive. It isn't just "vaguely functional if you really want to brag about how green you are", it is actually competitive with or superior to a gas-engine car for most users/consumers (some caveats for people who need to drive long distances in a single day).

We need to get more companies / inventors / whoever developing superior, functional alternatives to fossil fuel technologies. We need governments to encourage and enable those developments, NOT to cave to lobbyist pressure from big oil etc. and do the opposite. Prices will start high (like Tesla), but if you really are making a superior product, economy of scale will eventually kick in and normalize that out.

Outside of the consumer level, the same thing goes for actual power production. Even if we did nothing (which I would certainly not advocate), eventually scarcity and increased difficulty in obtaining fossil fuels (kinda sad that the past 2 decades of pointless wars 95% driven by oil haven't taught us this lesson yet, but there it is) will make the more "green" alternatives (solar, wind, tidal, nuclear, whatever) more economically practical. That tipping point will be when we see the real change begin.

Kudos, I'd just like to really highlight two of the good points you make.

First, Tesla motors is huge. When I said electric cars, I didn't mention them by name but was thinking specifically of them. They have proven that electric cars are the future and are coming quickly.

The second is as Tyson pointed out, the most important metric is energy coming into the planet compared to energy going out. Temperatures fluctuate to many other variables. Particularly if the oceans are absorbing or releasing energy, temperatures as we experience them will shift on that and muddy the perception of what's actually happening to the overall planet's energy balance and long term change. In the late 80's we started measuring the energy in and out of the atmosphere with satellites. There was an observed increase between late 80's and late 90's in the energy imbalance. That means not only was more energy coming in than going out over that time, but the excess staying in was getting higher. With increasing CO2 emissions, that is exactly what we expect. An increased overall greenhouse effect should see the energy imbalance growing quite steadily as the effect gets stronger and stronger. Now, the IPCC's fifth assessment report has the the longer term data from those same and new satellites. The data shows that since 2001 there is strong agreement that the data shows NO TREND. That doesn't mean the energy in the planet hasn't been increasing. It means the rate of extra energy coming in hasn't gone up or down statistically since 2001. It means the overall greenhouse effect has been entirely stagnant for a little more than the last decade. Things are warming, but no faster than they were ten years ago.

I hope that's not to technical, but it paints a non-catastrophic picture. It also gives a superb metric to measure climate models against going forward. The models universally are projected on a steadily accelerating greenhouse effect as CO2 emissions rise. If the measured results of the last decade continue to not reflect that much longer, we have more reassessing to do. As noted in the IPCC, the effect of water vapor and clouds to increasing temperature is poorly modelled right now. If we are lucky the uncertainty of the sign on it as feedback is resolved to find it is a negative feedback. Meaning, as things warm, more clouds appear and reflect more energy back out. As things cool, less clouds appear and more energy comes in. And yeah, that's my own hope, and it is not the majority opinion within the scientific community as represented by the IPCC. They do acknowledge it as a possibility, but a less likely one. That said, the models they base that opinion on do not match the satellite energy measurements, and that one uncertainty would explain it rather well. My fingers are still crossed. More reasons for my optimism is the IPCC projections through 2100. If you look close, the actual temperature plotted against the projections has the actual following the very coolest of projections so far. Again, that lends hope that something like water vapor is either working for us, or not as badly against us as is currently modelled.