Here is one thing I think we should do regarding energy, and that is to favor natural gas over coal. There are immediate health risks involved with burning coal as a fuel, but not so with natural gas. A series of legislative actions over the course of several decades could reduce the consumption of coal by requiring tighter environmental controls of coal power plants. I think that is more sensible than giving an equal weight to all fossil fuels with a generic carbon tax.
A "generic carbon tax" automatically punishes coal since it has the highest carbon content of all the fossil fuels...and so it serves to incentivize natural gas as well. You allow for intra-category substitution as well as inter-category substitution.
Greenhouse gases by themselves don't pose a direct health risk (at the concentrations in the atmosphere) but changing environment does in regard to increases in things like spread of diseases and disruptions to the food supply system. Except saying things aren't going to be bad also be jumping to a conclusion? I agree there is a lot of indeterminacy but at the same time we are planning for the future and in that sense it makes sense to consider that things might not be so good and prepare for it. For example if I live in a flood plain there is a lot of indeterminacy regarding if my house will be flooded by the river in any given year but it makes sense for me to buy flood insurance and build my house higher. Anyway your argument undermines your earlier point regarding sea ice. If you are saying that we don't look at long enough time scale then surely arguing for one year of sea ice data is irrelevant. And many previous civilizations were devastated by climate change. Anyway you are arguing local versus global. Globally human civilization has developed in a narrow band of climate. We have had periods of cooling and periods of warming but those have been relatively minor compared to what we have seen in geological scales. Also consider that the vast majority of our development, urbanization developing of international trade and green revolution, have all taken place within the last 200 years. Even the climate change that we have seen just in that period is already putting a lot of that under threat. That is why many countries and municipalities in the US are already factoring in changing sea levels into their planning. As I said though earlier even without climate change there are other reasons to move away from fossil fuels for renewables and greater efficiency.
