That said, tackling over-consumption could easily make more positive impact of reducing climate change than carbon trading or whatever other silly ideas the government will come up with.
Climate change will not cause every flood that happens around the world. It will, over time, cause floods to be more common and more severe. As it will cause forest fires, droughts and heatwaves to be more common and more severe, making our world a much more dangerous place to live in.
Suggesting that this one freak event was directly a result of climate change is absurd and dangerous.
@2 "The dirty secret that is not being spread is that we have cooled since 2000."
It's not a secret. 1998 was the hottest year on record, so you have jumped to the assumption that because temperatures have not further increased year on year that the atmosphere must be cooling. What you didn't take the time to read was that the 10 hottest years on record have all occurred in the last 12 years. Temperatures have stabilized (short term not long term) but at very high levels. This is perfectly normal for a long term trend of warmth. Average Temperatures have increased 0.75C over the last 100 years, and a further 0.6C the century before that. They are the little known facts.
The fact is that your arguments and most skeptic arguments are and have been easily refuted over and over. "The facts seem to be the climate is cooling!" The last 100 years has seen a global average temp increase of 0.75C and the century before that temps increased by a further 0.6C. 1998 was the hottest year on record, i assume that you believe that because over the last decade temps have stabilized that global warming must have ended. Well they stabilized at unusually high levels. The 10 hottest years on record all occurred in the last 12 years. Climate change takes place over hundreds of years, and you are naive to believe that because the last 10 years were not hotter than 1998, the earth must be cooling.
It's a sad day when people begin to ignore science because it is inconvenient, after science has done so much for us. The world is changing, either we change and adapt to survive as we have done for millions of years or we cease to be. Humans seem to have taken the stance now that we have reached the peak of existence, so we no longer to adapt to our surroundings but our surroundings have to adapt to us.
These polls are a joke. I've seen about 5 in the last month all with different findings. This one for example suggests that 77% of Americans favor action on climate change. It genuinely beggars belief that the American people think they can only be free with a "free market" and they demand less and less regulation by government on every issue. All this does is shift the power from the government to the rich business leaders. Rich business leaders who care about nothing other than profit margins and getting richer, at any cost. Profits could be spent on improving people lives, instead the rich get rich taking from the poor who get poorer.
Copenhagen's climate change battle2:53pm on 04 Nov 2009 I am expecting world leaders to fail to achieve anything of value on climate change at the talks, however with all the buzz and press about it before the conference, to simply come out of it after and announce it a failure must be praying on their minds. At worst I think they will claim it an important milestone to ward us off thinking it was a failure, but they are unlikely to achieve what needs to be achieved without a drastic hit of common sense, which politicians seem to have been lacking for years.
Heaven forbid they might actually realize quality of life might be more important than banks.