TommyMC,

You asked for an open mind in reading your answer, so I will provide a response to your answer.

1.) While you are correct that national debt is always increased by war, there have also been increases by many other notable programs such as what is going to occur with Social Security. Further as seen in recent history, a slump in the economy will cause deficit spending as readily as a war.

Generally speaking, infrastructure spending has always been a good thing. The money spent may cause debt, but that debt is easily by the economic advantage of the infrastructure.

The problem is when we are talking about how to tackle AGW. Most of even the "deniers" here would be well satisfied with an infrastructure improvement towards nuclear power instead of coal. This could be made to cost even less than coal if done correctly, while providing CO2 emission-free power. The plans could be made in such a manner to be entirely paid for without increases in taxes.

Most of the warmers here, however, are not talking about infrastructure improvement. They are talking about regressive taxes. They are talking about overall spending in the amount of 2% of GWP. They are talking about trillions of dollars of spending.

Now how does this affect debt? If you look at the federal revenue over th past 60 some odd years, you will note that it stays consistently at 18% of GDP. So in order to determine impact on revenue and thus debt, one needs to look at the effect on GDP. I have yet to hear a plan developed by the warmers that would not adversely affect GDP.

The other problem is the rational to justify what is being done. For concern about global warming, we need to have a plan and spend billions. For catastrophic global warming we could possibly justify billion dollar solution.

There is reason for concern. There is no reason for fear of catastrophe. Simply put, the major causes of concern would be serious drought or decrease in crop production. Droughts have not been increasing over the last 60 years.

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v49...

Crop production has been increasing faster than population.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Food_p...

This is not what we here. This is not what they project out to the media. We hear of global catastrophe to justify stupid "solutions" like regressive taxes.

Even now warmers are talking about global warming causing droughts in Cali (when they can't even show that global warming is causing an increase in droughts) leading to food price increases. Food price increases? The amount of food lost to the ethanol mandate (a warmer idea) in a year is valued at 4 times the amount of food lost to the Cali droughts. This does have a negative affect on the economy and thus the deficit. Sure it is hard to measure with the noise, especially in comparison with wars, but it does occur.

Wherein lies the point. If the warmers were honest with the amount of warming expected and were honest with plan to reduce CO2 emissions, then we could talk. AS it is, they are talking about plans of creating CO2 taxes and other disguised taxes, with no specifics on the costs to the taxpayers or the amount of CO2 reductions that would result.

Right now they use "think of the grandchildren" some assinine call to action.

I'm going to assume you aren't trolling, and actually want a balanced answer. At the risk of hurting my Best Answer percentage, I'll give this a shot....please pay me the respect of at least reading this with an open mind.

Your question assumes that our national debt is either due to...or being increased...by a "green" response to environmental issues. If you do a little research, you'll find that historically, the major contributing factor to the national debt is war. Wars cost an incredible amount of money. For instance, a single Tomahawk missile costs $1.4 million. Do the math.

I won't discuss the politics or justification for any of our wars....that's not really relevant to this discussion. The fact is that wars need to be paid for, and the gov't has to borrow huge amounts of money to finance them. If you look at historic graphs of the national debt, you'll see major spikes after every war...going all the way back to the American Revolution.

Okay, wartime spending may be the main contributor to national debt, but is environmental protection also a factor? There is an argument that all the things we do to minimize CO2 costs money. The thing that people don't realize is that when things cost money, somebody is also making money. Maybe that "green" money isn't going into the same pockets, but jobs are still being created, and that money is still being re-circulated into the economy.

When you talk about CO2 and "unprovable theory", I assume you're alluding to climate change. If one looks hard enough, there is always a scientist who will support one theory or another. I'm not a scientist, but from what I can see, the majority of them now agree that there is some change happening. Then there's a little more discussion about whether the changes are caused by man....or whether we can influence them. Rational people have differing opinions on that. Maybe we're in a natural cycle. Maybe we've created a new cycle. My personal guess is that we've had *some* effect, but I can't say how much.

The heart of the matter is that I don't think it really matters. The fact is that coal and oil are finite resources. Even the oil companies will give you estimates of how long the supply will last. At some point....50yrs....100yrs....you pick a number, the energy that's locked up in the ground will run out. Knowing this, a prudent course of action, with future generations in mind, is to start looking for other sources. If I can use an analogy, right now we're living off an energy bank account. Someday the money will run out and we'll have to support ourselves. Investing money now into alternate sources of energy (often clean) will insure that our grandchildren will be better off when the oil runs out.

Once again, Jello's got it right. It is always about the children with the left. Amnesty falsely referred to as Immigration reform attempted to focus on a few children. When California wants a new tax, they will try to figure out how it can make it sound like they are going to help or protect children. The lottery was all about the children yet somehow now it is in the general budget. It all is.

The left can't tell the truth and win elections. It has to lie and it has willing accomplices in the media. What is really pathetic is how easily some people are fooled. It seems they want to be fooled. The worst thing we could do to our grandchildren is throw away the legacy of the greatest country in the history of the earth that was brought about by the principles of the Founding Fathers and their wisdom of the dangers of a government that is too powerful. To the left, these words are like holy water to Regan in the Exorcist. They scream and shout with their fingers in the ear chanting that Founding Fathers were white slave owners etc. These ignoramuses have already eroded much of our protection from the government. The left always seems to harm those they try to help. Look what has happened to black families in the last 50 years and they still try to use race, gender, age etc for politics. I have hope that Americans will wake up because you can only fool that many people so many times and they have been waking up.

You better be more wary of the tree migration north. It seems that in Vermont this movement is really progressing northward at an alarming rate. 300 feet in 40 years!

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/10...

It doesn't say anything about the hardwood trees migrating towards the equator, so I'm guessing that there are more hardwood trees growing and they are expanding northwards.

Maybe we can pay off our debt by harvesting more hardwood trees and selling them to a Government that isn't in debt so they can build nice furniture for themselves? ... or maybe build some nice furniture to sell to a "RICH" Government abroad?

Liberals always hide behind "the children". They know if you disagree with them, they will claim you hate kids. It's a false logic, but makes sense to the global warming believers. They claim that they want to help "the children" as they steal their future from them spending their money before they even earn it. Greedy.

Don't pretend that you care about anyone but yourself

They are concerned about them financially, that's why they want to do something about global warming before the costs rise astronomically. The costs associated with avoiding warming are much less than the costs of trying to deal with it once it's here. That's something deniers can't get through their Bigfoot skulls.

you are assuming future generations will pay less in climate damage than the cost of prevention.

For crying out loud...

We need a balance. We need to be financially responsible and watch how much we consume. Let me say, I am sick of CEOs who cry about making only a few million instead of tens of millions, because they have to apply policies to protect our planet.

Carbon dioxide is not good for us. This has been proven. It's not a silly theory. You are dismissing fact because you don't like the evidence. If you ignore the scientific experts, who are you getting your ideas from? Politicians who benefit from the killing of our planet? Ever notice the "coincidence" of politicians who are supported by oil lobbies not believing in damage to the environment? You need to open your eyes and see who is protecting themselves instead of others.

Think about it this way...your kid has a decent job in the future, but is diagnosed with a rare and malignant form of cancer because of the crap we put in the air.

Your kid is then unable to work. How much is that well paying job going to help when your kid can't work?

If we wreck the planet, money will be worthless. But, future generations can always use it for fuel.

We in the US are in debt so deep that it is questionable whether or not our grandchildren can pay it off. Yet we have greenies who are trying to scare us that our grandchildren 'might' suffer from a rise in CO2. All this over an unprovable theory.

So they can tax them . It wont change anything but they get a feeling of doing something good even though it will screw up later.

sorry you can't see the big picture

they are concerned about the economy too.

A scientific theory is based on facts.

The Bible is mythology