The authors of this article wasted their time; and the Journal should not have published it. So-called man-made "global warming" or "climate change" is a hoax and "The Great Green Con." In another time, the proponents of “global warming” and the “green energy” fad would have been members of the “Flat Earth Society,” and claimed a “consensus” with respect to them too. The Paris conference is a meeting of misguided Lilliputians and charlatans. Barack Obama is among the world's elites whose obsession and fanaticism with global warming are threats to civilized life on this planet.

Our Earth goes through natural cycles, of warming and cooling. It always has; and it will continue long after all of us—and our children, and their offspring—have left this earthly realm. As bizare as it sounds, anthropomorphic climate change and carbon footprint have nothing to do with the earth or her safety. They are smoke screens for wealth transfer from developed nations to poor. This is simply greed and avarice on a massive scale brought to you by those who believe it is proper to redistribute wealth by any means. "To those with need, from those with resources."

In spite of the risk of being labeled a "denier", I still think the climate change radicals have an unfair advantage. By making claims based on magical predictions of future disasters, they intend to save humanity using their "solutions". There are several main issues: 1) Predictions are by their very nature unproven. You cannot "prove" something that hasn't happened. As an example, I could tell you that if you gave me $1,000 today, I could guarantee that the sun will rise tomorrow based on my "solution" today. When it does rise, I can name my price. 2) Fluctuations in world wide climate has happened for millions of years, in the short term (month to month or year to year), medium term (centuries), and longer term (thousands of years). If you look at some graphs, it gets warmer then drastically gets colder. We might now be at the peak of warming meaning the temperature might drop with no intervention. 3) Measurements have changed. To compare today to 500 years ago is not valid.

The stone age did not end because we ran out of stone.  If every coal-related job in the country were to disappear tomorrow, we would have 185,000 unemployed former coal workers... that's everyone. Mining, distribution, sales, everything. We can easily absorb those 185K into new energy industries like wind and solar.  I don't say this in an effort to refute your statements, just to point out that there is no long-lasting and insurmountable downside in finding alternative fuels.  But compare the air quality in Los Angeles or New York in 1972 to the air quality now, and you'll see that we can have an impact, and we can improve the environment.  On the other side, there's a dying dirty coal industry, with heavy investment by the author of this article in preserving what is literally... a dinosaur.  Jason - Part of your statement is one of the issues I have with climate change extremists. "Dying dirty coal" is not the issue anymore than leaded gasoline was. Unleaded gasoline with catalytic converters still gives gasoline powered automobiles.

Even if the end result of carbon dioxide is a problem, cleaner coal production or carbon dioxide recovery might minimize the problem. Likewise, electric powered automobiles depend on generated electricity. As of 2014, 67% of electricity was generated by fossil fuels. In addition, data over long periods of time is not comparable. With today's climate science, data based on satellites is accurate, as well as ocean or land based. But unless I am just not aware of it, did the American Indians collect millions of data points before Christopher Columbus arrived? Trend projections are best using equivalent data points. Short term trends like years or decades are not good predictors for long terms like centuries.