Father of Global Warming Svante Arrhenius: An Early False Prophet Of The 'Energy Crisis'

Ferdinand,
That is exactly how I see it. CO2 has some effect. Most of that effect has already happened. It would require doubling of CO2 from here to raise global T even 1ºC. But that is not likely to happen for several reasons, not the least of which is advancing technology.
Furthermore, a 1º rise would be just about entirely beneficial. More farmland would be opened for cultivation. Less Arctic ice, saving transit fuel. The biosphere would love the added CO2. And warmth is good; cold kills.
That should be enough to end the debate. But when religious folks debate, there’s no changing their minds. They don’t want to go to eco-hell.

Bob Boder says:
Funny but Brandon Gates agrees with you about half way up the page.
No way in hell that Gates would agree with that, whether it’s true or not.
I’d like to know why Gates argues incessantly. Is it his insecurity? Maybe. Is it his narcissism? No doubt. But whatever the reason, he is wrong and skeptics are right. Planet Earth is making that crystal clear. The carbon scare is a hoax.
Mr. Gates has an overwhelming need to argue, to nitpick, to split hairs, and to explain to everyone exactly why he doesn’t agree with scientific skeptics — who are the only honest kind of scientists. For every statement skeptics put forth, there is a “yes, but” response from Gates.
Why does a guy like that waste so much of his limited time on Earth posting on various blogs around the internet, trying to convince people they’re wrong, when as you say there is a lot of agreement? I’ve never changed my view, and it is spelled out above. It is the mainstream view. But Gates cannot admit that. He cannot abide being merely close to agreement. He must nit-pick and argue incessantly. What motivates a guy like that? He is clearly driven. But I notice that he never makes any converts.
My personal objection to the bogus carbon scare is the fact that the country is being milked by shysters in white coats. They have discovered a way to frighten the populace, and thus cash in. There is no scientific truth in their alarmist narrative. None. They argue for one [or a combination of] reasons:
They argue to be self-serving. Those are crooked scientists like Michael Mann, who jumped on the man-made global warming bandwagon and who found that it provides the things they never dreamed of in school: instead of being unsociable nerds, they are now famous. They are constantly sent on vacations to expense-paid holiday venues, where they party hearty. Their pronouncements are carried in the media. And they are cashing in financially at taxpayers’ expense. But it is based on the hoax of man-made global warming and imminent climate catastrophe, not on honest science.
Then there are some alarmists who argue to fill a religious hole that they cannot fill with the organized religions they reject. It is crystal clear to unbiased observers that environmentalism is no different from any other religion. It gives their empty lives meaning. They believe there was a Paradise before humans ruined it with technology [the Fall from grace]. They believe they are sinners, but they can be saved. That’s how Greenpeace and others are able to collect hundreds of millions of their dues dollars every year; those dollars are their indulgences.
Those members are buying their salvation, and their forgiveness. Is there any doubt? It is so obvious to outsiders that we don’t question it. Nor do the religious True Believers question their motives and actions. They don’t question it when their Directors are caught using 1st-class air travel to commute, when they could just as easily take the train. They continue to pay their dues, because it is their salvation. The difference between us is that skeptics are the live-and-let-live types. But eco-alarmists are proselytes, who will convert us by force if necessary. They’re not kidding, either.
Then there are those like Gates, who crave appearing knowledgeable. They have taught their friends and acquaintences the same narrative/belief for so long, that it has become a part of them. They cannot admit that they were ever wrong. They cannot admit that Planet Earth is contradicting their narrative. If they admitted the planet was correct and they were wrong, they would feel foolish and embarrassed. There is no way that they could ever be scientific skeptics, because skeptics change their minds if and when necessary. People like Gates try to appear superior, and he can only do that by disagreeing, and by endlessly nitpicking random points, in order to instruct readers how they must think: they must think like Gates. But of course, he’s nothing special. And as the planet is making clearer every day, he is simply wrong. He just cannot admit it.
The situation is just as Ferdinand explains it above. There is nothing unusual happening with “the climate”. There is no reason at all to be alarmed; we have truly been living in a “Goldilocks” temperature range, which has flutuated within only ≈0.7ºC over a century and a half. That is NOTHING! Just prior to our current Holocene, temperatures varied by TENS of degrees both up and down, within only a decade or two — and without any human interference or emissions.
After more than fifty years of serious investigation, nothing out of the ordinary has been discovered. There is still not one single measurement quantifying AGW. Global temperatures are completely normal; better than ‘normal’: they are as perfect as they have ever been in recorded history. And if temperatures were to rise by a fraction of a degree, so what? That would be entirely beneficial. There is no downside. And every last scary prediction from the alarmist crowd has failed miserably. When someone is always wrong, rational people should disregard thier opinions. Why are the climate alarmists exempt?
The people arguing against the tiny trace gas CO2 are exactly the same kind of people who will not allow their children to be vaccinated. There is no difference, except in their own particular religious belief — which has nothing to do with the Scientific Method in either case. They are demonizing a minuscule trace gas that is essential to all life on earth, and which has been up to twenty times higher in the past, while causing no problems, and with no downside.
The ‘carbon’ scare is completely baseless. Yet we continue to pay tens of $Billions every year, trying to mitigate a non-problem. That major misallocation of resources affects everyone. It is a giant Broken Window fallacy. It hurts the country, and everyone in it.
If any other scam of that magnitude was taking place, the perpetrators would be rightfully sent to the penitentiary for committing fraud. They are looting the country to line their own pockets, and they are doing it by lying. Notice that none of them will even debate any more. Instead, they use alarmist proxies like Gates and the handful of people here promoting the UN’s hoax, while people like Mann hide out in their ivory towers, slinging abuse at scientific skeptics via their Twitter accounts.
With even the UN and the President of the U.S. in on the scam now, the best we can do is fight back using the only weapon we have: the truth. Because that is the one thing the alarmist crowd does not have.