If I read you correctly, you are saying that nothing here, today, is new.
Not quite. Within the average person's lifetime there's always something new. Unfortunately, this is the standard so often used for describing extreme weather events as 'unprecedented', that is, the worst in living memory, completely ignoring historical records that go back further than a lifetime.
Using this standard, it's logical that every person who has ever lived must have experienced an unprecedented extreme weather event of some type in their lifetime, whether flood, drought, heatwave, cyclone or forest fire.
Just for the sake if argument, let's assume you are correct. Does it not, nonetheless, make good sense for mankind to reduce all possible additional contributory actions that it can, simply in order not to add to the problems we face?
Of course it makes good sense, but in order to do that one must first be aware of the history of those extreme weather events that have had little to do with human activity in the past, and then be confident that such extreme weather events are getting worse, over time, and that the reason they are getting worse is due to specific human activities, such as human emissions of CO2.
For example, the city of Darwin in Northern Australia was devastated by a cyclone on Christmas day in 1974. This was before the alarm about CO2 emissions had become pervasive. Certain religious people claimed that the cause of the cyclone was a punishment by God for the city naming itself after Charles Darwin, that horrible atheistic character who demolished the Adam and Eve myth.
However, this area in Australia has a long history of cyclones, recorded since 1839. Refer attached article.
http://www.darwinstorms.com/cyclones/The devastation caused by the 1974 Cyclone Tracy was greater than it should have been because past governments had ignored the obvious risk of a severe cyclone hitting the city, despite the historical record of cyclones in that area making it clear that there was a strong risk, and such governments had approved the construction of standard homes that were not designed to withstand the force of cyclones.
The initial reaction to the devastation was that the city of Darwin should be abandoned, and real estate prices plummeted as a consequence. However, someone then had the brilliant idea that it would be sensible to rebuild the city with a new and more robust building code that ensured all homes could withstand the force of a category 4 cyclone, such as Cyclone Tracy. This was done and I missed out becoming a multi-millionaire as property prices rebounded.
