Especially the overshadowing of more immediate environmental problems.
Ground water pollution, overfishing, use of nonsustainable pesiticides in agriculture, VOCs, unsustainable logging practices, etc
these are tangible environmental impacts with short and long term associations.
There are extreme solutions being presented for climate change and the inevitable conclusion is that non VOC carbon emissions need to be immediately and significantly cut in order to stave off certain apocolypse. We are told this consistently under by people who use the word Science as some trademarked PR mechanism without any real evidence that cutting carbon emissions will reverse climate change. Even the fossil fuel industry is on board with a carbon credit scheme.
What happened to "correlation does not equal causation"?
This is about money. This is about politics. The Club or Rome was the first to indicate a correlation between carbon dioxide and climate change, in 1972. Meadows, D., et al., “The Limits to Growth.” New York 1972
Here's what the Club of Rome has to say about creating a global boogey man:
The need for enemies seems to be a common historical factor. Some states have striven to overcome domestic failure and internal contradictions by blaming external enemies. The ploy of finding a scapegoat is as old as mankind itself - when things become too difficult at home, divert attention to adventure abroad. Bring the divided nation together to face an outside enemy, either a real one, or else one invented for the purpose. With the disappearance of the traditional enemy, the temptation is to use religious or ethnic minorities as scapegoats, especially those whose differences from the majority are disturbing."[8] "Every state has been so used to classifying its neighbours as friend or foe, that the sudden absence of traditional adversaries has left governments and public opinion with a great void to fill. New enemies have to be identified, new strategies imagined, and new weapons devised."[8] "In searching for a common enemy against whom we can unite, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like, would fit the bill. In their totality and their interactions these phenomena do constitute a common threat which must be confronted by everyone together. But in designating these dangers as the enemy, we fall into the trap, which we have already warned readers about, namely mistaking symptoms for causes. All these dangers are caused by human intervention in natural processes, and it is only through changed attitudes and behavioyr that they can be overcome. The real enemy then is humanity itself
The politics is TOO strong on this argument. Don't call yourself a skeptic because you push back against those who question the "ScienceTM". That's a disingenuous coopting of the term skepticism. Don't tell me there is a "scientific concensus" on the subject: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Lindzen. Don't say weather is not climate and then blame extreme weather events on climate change. It's almost a religious argument at that point. You aren't a "skeptic" for pushing a theory. You're a skeptic for continuing to question prevailing theories and pick them apart to arrive at more complete science.
Don't tell that someone who questions the basis for the theory must be a stupid republican or not understand science or be reading fossil fuel lobby propaganda. nearly EVERY international conglomerate is onboard and most of them support a global cap and trade/ carbon taxation scheme.