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Flaming Tatas.

This one is cooler http://www.thebigmoney.com/blogs/shifting-gears/2010/03/05/learn-fly-jetpack-yes-jetpack

you should also have doubts about science done by someone who is paid by people, with, say, a political agenda that happens to include making life painful for businesses.

Climate scientists don't have a political agenda to "make life painful for businesses". And believe it or not, they like economic prosperity as much as anybody.

There is no alternative energy source that can replace oil, coal, natural gas, etc., anywhere even close to being on the horizon for the next several decades - at least, none that can possibly meet the hugely expanding economies of India, China, and soon to be Africa. Taxing energy use is simply a tax on economic activity. Period. That will incredibly impact GDP.

That contradicts what actual economists find (e.g., here, here).

The initial carbon tax would be low, ramping up over time as alternative energies continue to improve. Emissions reductions gains will come first mostly from energy efficiency measures. Such measures currently have an insufficient economic incentive because of the artificially low price of fossil fuel which neglects environmental externalities. A carbon price changes that equation. Efficiency measures will be followed later by gradually increasing investments in alternative energy (which is also incentivized by a carbon price). The large majority of the revenue raised by the tax would be returned to the public in the form of tax rebates, direct dividends, or a tax shift; the remainder would be invested in further alternative energy R&D and to cushion the economic impact to particularly vulnerable sectors.

It does have an impact on GDP, on the order of the total amount of money invested in environmental regulation and remediation so far (which hasn't bankrupted anybody). But it's not pure suppression of economic activity with "incredible" devastating impacts, either.

Interesting that a historically rather serious recession can only cause a small decrease.

That's because recessions are not economically efficient ways to lower carbon emissions. They don't address the energy sector specifically, they don't specifically target low-emissions technology development or efficiency measures, etc. They just indiscriminately suppress economic activity, and obviously have effects far beyond the carbon-related sector.

For more on the economics of climate policy, see here and here.

It seems like cutting CO2 back to the levels needed to stop global warming would require or cause a much more serious recession.

That's probably true, which is why nobody is proposing to cut CO2 levels to stop global warming. Or at least, not stop it at current temperatures. Most want to stabilize it at 2 C above pre-industrial. That will still have serious costs (as would unstabilized climate change), but if appropriately designed to specifically promote low-carbon activity, it's not going to create a severe recession; see the above links.

CO2 emissions mitigation policies cost money (as does climate change itself), but they're not going to destroy the economy or "roll back the industrial revolution". Sheesh . That's the skeptic scare version of "global warming alarmism". FUID against climate policy is at least as bad, if not worse, than FUD against climate science. More here on the economics of climate policy, and a good book.

Lets assume you are correct. Who's to say a warmer earth is bad?

On the whole, a warmer earth may be better for humans than an earth colder by an equivalent amount. However, the problem is that global temperatures have been relatively stable for the last 10,000 years, and human civilization has adapted to that temperature range. Move too far out of it in either direction, too quickly, and there will be costs. People can't just easily shift their agricultural production or settlement patterns into neighboring countries.

It wasn't long ago we were told we were heading in to a new ice age.

Not really.

Climate cycles actually suggest we are (were) heading down that path. Wouldn't we WANT to warm the earth?

Over tens of thousands of years, we might head into another ice age. If you're so concerned about that, you should argue that we should save our fossil fuels for later, when we'll need them, instead of using them all up now, when we don't.

Ice age aside, wouldn't an increased crop growth durations help battle famine?

Depends on where you are. In the mid-latitudes, you tend to get small benefits for 1-2 degrees C warming. The tropics suffer. For more than 3 C of warming, everybody tends to suffer. On top of that, you have to account for the fact that precipitation patterns change, and many agricultural regions may suffer drought.

Lets study the impact

Uh, yeah, people have studied impacts.

rather than demand we do stuff that will destroy not just the developed worlds economy, but potentially starve millions when the industrial world can no longer afford to produce food and medicine on the current scale.

Nobody is interested in "destroying the economy". That's the conservative alarmist version of "the planet will burn up". Just ask economists, e.g. here.