More like, how do we know they're right and why should we spend trillions and give the government more power, to reduce warming by 0.2 degrees in 2080?
Since the vast, vast majority of scientists all agree that carbon emissions are affecting climate, the bigger question is why are you so keen on denying that there might be something to it.
Nobody has asked for "trillions of dollars". They've asked businesses to cut carbon emissions. At worst, it's helping us breath better. At best, we're helping the planet to survive.
Is it possible that your reluctance to participate is because you fear this may cost you money?
Did you ever hear of "net carbon sink - sequesters"? (Not financial as relates to congress ok??)
"The U.S. landscape acts as a net carbon sink—it sequesters more carbon than it emits.
Two types of analyses confirm this:
1) atmospheric, or top-down, methods that look at changes in CO2 concentrations; and
2) land-based, or bottom-up, methods that incorporate on-the-ground inventories or plot measurements.
Net sequestration (i.e., the difference between carbon gains and losses) in U.S. forests, urban trees and agricultural soils totaled almost 840 teragrams (Tg) of CO2 equivalent (or about 230 Tg or million metric tons of carbon equivalent) in 2001 (Inventory of U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Sinks).
This offsets approximately 15% of total U.S. CO2 emissions from the energy, transportation and other sectors. Net carbon sequestration in the forest sector in 2005 offset 10% of U.S. CO2 emissions. In the near future, we project that U.S. forests will continue to sequester carbon at a rate similar to that in recent years. Based on a comparison of our estimates to a compilation of land-based estimates of non-forest carbon
sinks from the literature, we estimate that the conterminous U.S. annually sequesters 149–330 Tg C year1. Forests, urban trees, and wood
products are responsible for 65–91% of this sink.
http://www.ncrs.fs.fed.us/pubs/jrnl/2007/nrs_2007_woodbury_001.pdf
New data show that the balance between the airborne and the absorbed fraction of carbon dioxide has stayed approximately constant since 1850, despite emissions of carbon dioxide having risen from about 2 billion tons a year in 1850 to 35 billion tons a year now.
This suggests that terrestrial ecosystems and the oceans have a much greater capacity to absorb CO2 than had been previously expected.
The results run contrary to a significant body of recent research which expects that the capacity of terrestrial ecosystems and the oceans to absorb CO2 should start to diminish as CO2 emissions increase, letting greenhouse gas levels skyrocket.
World Climate Report » Earth?s Carbon Sink Still Strong and Growing
So again I ask what country should pay a carbon tax if our landscapes absorbs all the USA emits and can absorb another 10%?
