J.C., America can't afford to fix up or build the infrastructure that is needed to counter extreme weather events. All its spare cash is directed into preparing for more wars including the nuclear one that will visit Earth in the next few years.

Also, most Americans would prefer materialism to continue rather than have to give up their electronic gimmicks, fast food, and Fux News.

Do not look to the U.S. for leadership. It is involved in trying to achieve global domination. It can't do two things at the same time!

There is no question about the fact that Sandy was human-induced (as well as by some butterfly in Brazil, but that's besides the point).

The question is just why should it bother us if some Americans are being punished, as should, for their sins!

As the author wrote with horror, "even disrupting the presidential election schedule" - tut tut!

I like the bit about "the drills continue to hammer into America's tar sands, oil shale and gas deposits, petroleum explorers probe the melting Arctic, and coal miners slice the tops off mountains".
And I especially like the idea of the extraction industries following their own devastation into the sea-beds under the now disappearing Arctic ice to find more hydrocarbons to feed the loop.
I might add that the whole of the Middle East has been set ablaze by there serial pillagers.
Is it true that the US military is the largest single user of hydrocarbons in the world today? And if it is, is there any wonder that they continue to rape and pillage all the world for their fuel?
Go figure - that's what militaries do. And has there ever been a military that listened to voices saying, "Escuse me, but you guys are so on the wrong track."

Simply described, humankind is limiting its own capacity to survive and to prosper on this, our only earth. We are responsible collectively for trapping of heat in the air and oceans and for the lesser evil, actual emission of waste heat to the atmosphere. These very clearly exacerbate extreme climate events - this isn't determined by counting lists of cyclones, it is physics.

EVERY cyclone formed over warmer water, will be stronger than were it formed over cooler water, bringing winds of higher velocities and rain of greater intensity and higher storm surges.

EVERY rise in ocean levels increases the risk that the next storm will flood lowlying areas, wash away beach houses, flood transport routes and disrupt power supplies.

Yet still neanderthals attempt to suppress action based on these inescapable truths. The time for climate debate has passed. The side which calls for a yes/no debate has deluded itself into believing that smart words will defend against the demonstrated reality of climate physics. It cannot and will not. If there is to be a debate, it must be about: How fast? What changes are urgent? How do the inhabitants of this world cooperate?

As for SPQR's assertion that the UN's mission is to extort money from USA: If only USA paid in full the bills it is currently ignoring! USA takes the cake for pretending that its laws have global effect, while simultaneously opting out of every international law or treaty which its captains of industry believe not to be in the interests of US commerce. Its military arms have a similar approach to world peace, the path to which runs, it seems, through fostering of continuous warfare.

It's time for peace studies and peace initiatives to be better funded than military hardware, military training and actual warfare.

The alternative is endless wars, avoidance of coordinated international action for the common good, resource depletion, economic collapse, degenerating global climate and rising sea levels.

Enough of this useless non-debate. Let's address useful stuff, like considering the issues which will set the stage for the next thousand years.

Dear John,

<<Yet still neanderthals attempt to suppress action>>

Are you trying to insult the neanderthals, or have they ever suppressed any similar action?

<<The alternative is endless wars, avoidance of coordinated international action for the common good, resource depletion, economic collapse, degenerating global climate and rising sea levels.>>

Sounds charming, when compared to the state-control measures suggested by AGW proponents!

Your idea of "common good" has nothing good in it - better be a neandarthal, thanks!

@JohnBennetts: "Simply described, humankind is limiting its own capacity to survive and to prosper on this, our only earth."

Funny, then, isn't it, how there are more people living better, longer, healthier, more prosperous lives at this point in history than at any time in the past? Largely because of the use of fossil fuels, but also through other innovations that have all come from the developed Western nations that you want to cripple and destroy. How many Indians and Chinese are there who would not be alive today without Western technology and Western medicine? Do you really think they are going to go along with a crazy plan to hamstring the societies which produce the technology which keeps them healthy, housed and fed?