According to the Vostok ice core data, earth has gone through four cycles of heating and cooling lasting about 100,000 years each time. We are still in an ice age because we still have ice at the poles. When we are not in an ice age things get a lot warmer and that happened quite naturally in the past.

CO2 levels have been at least 17 times as high in the past quite naturally.

The main issue thrown up by the Vostok data (that was the graph Al Gore showed in his Inconvenient Truth film) is that it is actually the warming the precedes the CO2 increase by a few centuries. So it is more likely that warming causes CO2 rather than CO2 causes warming.

You are right about the money aspect. First you get a wealthy country on board so you have cash available to bribe the poorer countries. You can then rely on "democracy" to get your way. The bribed countries will vote with you. Then you increase the scare until the whole world agrees to a global tax which will eventually be used to finance your new globalist government.