there is a difference
between climate change happening on timescales of tens or hundreds of millennia or more; and anthropogenic climate change which happens on the scale of a hundred years.

It is much harder for ecosystems to adapt on these shorter timescales; and it's harder still if they are being stressed by pollution, over-exploitation (fishing, logging, etc) -- the damage is considerably greater.

Back to timescales. Biology and geophysics conspired to extract vast quantities of CO2 from the atmosphere and ecosystems, and bury it underground in process taking hundreds of millions of years.

Human use of this stored carbon (ie fossil fuels) will dump it back in the atmosphere over a hundred years or so. ONE. MILLION. TIMES. FASTER.

But hey, who cares. Lets see how much it costs to move almost every major coastal city inland. Lets see what the Russians think of perhaps half a billion desperate refugees heading north. But who cares: after all, you'll be dead.

Edit (for below):

chcb: (a) but generating our own catastrophe thorough inaction is just stupid (b) I'm not sure a few tens of thousands of men with guns will stop half a billion. (c) overdue a supervolcano! great, let's set one off now!
(haberman is singing in the changes, Fri 1 Aug 2008, 17:20, Reply)