Alarmists believe this change would create a feedback loop causing higher temperatures, more adverse weather events, melting ice caps, higher sea levels, and species die-off followed by collapse of some local ecosystems.

You're pretty informed about the argument so let me put in my 2c. To me the alarmist side is a prima facie lie because they refuse to give the public any figures on how much carbon needs to be reduced and why. It's all vague moralizing designed to make you save just a little more every day without ever stopping to consider whether that amounts to significant change.

The only broad assessment that has been published, to my knowledge, is that it would take about 1000 years for CO2 levels to return to "normal" if we somehow stopped producing it tomorrow. So given that statement, we have been an industrial world for 150 years give or take, therefore supposedly imbalancing the climate for 150 years. How many tons of CO2 are in the atmosphere right now over the natural "baseline"? Are we already past the "point of no return"?

Why are climate advocates so obsessed with emissions agreements like the Kyoto Protocol that merely limit emissions to levels in the recent past? Surely this means we are still marching toward the cliff, just marginally slower. As any CO2 added to the atmosphere is essentially permanent, one would need to reduce emissions by 100% or even remove CO2 from the atmosphere in order to "save the planet."

If people really thought we were going to go extinct, we would see a full array of strategies explored including carbon trapping and storage. Instead the face of the movement is a couple college age girlies who are "forced" by their parents to fly across the world for vacation.