Ah, the modern approach to climate change denial: OK, climate change is real and caused by people [ya think?], but it's more of a problem of koalas and gorillas

Ah, the modern approach to climate change denial: OK, climate change is real and caused by people [ya think?], but it's more of a problem of koalas and gorillas and not a big problem for people. And what we really need to do is burn more coal. Complete BS. E.g. the rationale of burning coal is that if India burns more coal they'll become wealthier faster and that will push the birthrate down, which will result in fewer people using less energy. That obviously makes no sense since wealthier nations have much higher per-capita carbon emissions which far more than offsets lower population growth. E.g. the US has ~8x the per-capita carbon emissions of India. (Now a constant change in the rate of population growth will overcome that difference in enough time -- but there's no reason to expect the difference to be constant. In fact, no exponential phenomenon holds a constant rate of growth for long since it must soon outstrip the environment that allows it.) The only reason an intelligent person would make such a easily refutable untrue claim is because it's in their personal self interests to do so... It's a con and they are making money. (It's not too hard to guess where the money might be coming from, BTW) Of course these guys love the environmentalist lunatic fringe. They are easy to dislike and easy to argue against. And as long as you can keep the focus on them you don't have to address real objects. The idea that climate change will have a minor impact on GDP is also terribly wrong. The essential dynamic of the climate change crisis is that we are "borrowing from the future" -- we're emitting a lot of carbon now for short term gain vs costs that won't come due for the long term. But the GDP projections are based on the effect of climate change on our GDP in the recent past. It's like taking cash advances on a 40% no-minimum payment credit card and saying: "this won't screw up my financial future, look at how much money I've had in my pocket over the last week... At this rate, I'll always have money in my pocket." But the reality is the bill is going to come due.