I hear this a lot and feel like it is a muddled response to a muddled understanding of climate change.

For what it is worth:

    * Science is clear that CO2 causes warming (pure physics), but so do many other gases (methane, water vapor, etc).
    * Science is clear that global temperatures are rising (even if you quibble about the 'pause')
    * Science isn't clear regarding what part of global temperature rise is due to human activity.
    * Science isn't clear on how much and how fast temperatures might rise.
    * Science isn't clear on how to model the climate. Climate models have incorporated a net positive sensitivity to CO2 warming and make predictions that have exceeded actual temperature gains. So the models are not accurately predicting the climate.
    * Science isn't going to provide a definitive policy response to increased temperatures. There are many options.

In particular, the warming due to CO2 physics is NOT the catastrophic warming that we see reported in the news. That warming is based on climate models incorporating a large positive sensitivity to the CO2 warming (as well as many other factors). The models are not "settled science". The actual sensitivity is not something that can be measured with today's scientific understanding of complex climate systems.

Even if the climate models were making correct predictions. It doesn't automatically follow that the policy solution is to reduce CO2 emissions to 0. The costs of clean energy have to be borne by someone and cutting off energy supplies (because energy is more expensive) to developing economies, for example, also has consequences. The negative affects of warming can be mitigated also via relocating people, communities, and changing our land-use patterns, etc. The correct policy mix is going to depend on many factors, most of which are going to vary from place to place. A single global policy proscription isn't likely to be feasible for lots of reasons.

Finally, criticism of policy proscriptions shouldn't automatically be interpreted and characterized as rejecting the climate change hypothesis. In many cases there are argument for or against policy proscriptions that aren't even related to climate change, such as improving air quality, increasing the efficiency of our energy systems, using market based approaches to avoid crony capitalism and favored industries, and so on.