They may be as affronted by my attitude as I am by theirs, but that's neither here nor there to the evidence. Speaking of which, here's a Nature study of hurricane intensity increasing with warming oceans in five of the six ocean basins surveyed. The exception was the South Pacific, where Severe Tropical Cyclone Yasi set Australian records when it made landfall northwest of where Cyclone Anthony had four days earlier. One report said it was still a Cat 1 after it had traveled 600 km inland; to put that in perspective that's the equivalent of a hurricane making it from Houston to Abilene.

We know the planet's warming, we know it's producing more intense hurricanes (among other things) and we know the results will be catastrophes of varying degrees. The only debate now is whether and how much of a role humanity plays. Yet whether or not we accept and attempt to mitigate the cause(s), the need to mitigate the EFFECTS should be obvious now. The current situation is reminiscent of Appeasement in the '30s, when world leaders indulgently insisted the human and monetary costs of preventing disaster were less than those of recovering from it.