Quick question. Do you believe in the Plastic Trash Gyre in the Pacific? It is estimated to be somewhere between the size of Texas and the size of Russia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pacific_garbage_patch
Believe is an interesting turn-of-phrase. Knowing how bad humans are for dumping rubbish (a quick look at any lay-bys near where I live is bad enough, sadly) then it doesn't surprise me that there this massive patch of plastic in the ocean.
(But I don't necessarily believe Sky News every time they show a picture of a plastic bottle on a beach somewhere; for all I know they could have placed it there just before they started filming).
Note: this question is not about climate change, but is directed towards your idea that humans are incapable of causing immense environmental changes via pollution. The planet is (nearly exclusively) a closed system (lost helium being an exception). If we dump waste, whether vehicle and industrial emissions or plastic waste, it ends up somewhere and has an effect. Surely you wouldn't disagree with this?
I didn't say that humans were
incapable of causing environmental changes - I think it's pretty obvious that humans pollute the planet. But I don't think they are
the sole cause of climate change. As someone upthread mentioned (sorry, not sure who it was) it's more likely that the climate was heading that way anyway, and we've possibly accelerated it. Or that it was heading that way anyway, and nothing we can do will stop it.
And I will re-iterate what I said previously: no amount of tax increases will fix it.
Now the meteorologists around the world have been noting the global average temperatures increasing for a very long time. They have compared notes with geologists and obtained evidence from wherever they could in the geological record that our planet provides, that show there has never been such a rapid and extreme increase in carbon dioxide in our atmosphere. Now while our planet's atmosphere is huge, it is still a closed system, and there are currently no other credible explanations for the sudden increase in CO2 emissions other than human activity, and yes, people have looked. The scale of the disaster our civilization is constructing for itself is impressive. One could almost view it as an alien conspiracy if human irresponsibility weren't a more plausible answer.
That would be the meteorologists who are willing to toe the party line, of course.
My opinion still stands that they cannot possibly know, based on what you have to admit is a drop in the ocean in terms of the age of the earth, what the climate will do over a long period of time.
Imagine a sinusoidal wave, on an oscilloscope. The meteorologists are studying the equivalent of zooming right in so they can only see the tiny curve at the top of one wave. Unless and until they have the ability to 'zoom out' and see the entire wave (i.e. the entire climate lifetime of Earth so far) then I will continue to take their findings with a rather large pinch of salt.
And now a question for you:
Do you believe it's possible for the Sun to have an effect on the Earth and its climate? Ever heard of the Maunder Minimum?