Last spring I interviewed Dr. Louis Uccellini, the head of the National Weather Service. He informed me that, based on weather models, it was likely to be the worst hurricane season on record. The probability for strong storms was great.

Haiyan has proved him tragically correct.

Today, a leaked report by an international panel of scientists that details the risks to the world's economy, as well as the global food and water supply, is making its way around the Internet. The findings showcase a wide range of climate change impacts that add up to a planet in peril.

Will those findings be proved tragically correct? It's likely. And this is why climate change deniers are such fools.

Climate change deniers would have us believe that the spike in carbon emissions is unrelated to the spike in extreme weather events globally. (On average, the storms that had been occurring every 100 years are now happening every three years.) Deniers would also de-link climate change and extreme weather events-- which is asinine; climate is by definition the culmination of weather events over time.

The World Meteorological Organization announced last week that the rise in greenhouse gases accelerated to an all-time high in 2012, and that carbon emissions were responsible for 80 percent of the jump.

We should look at Haiyan as a dire warning of things to come, not as an anomaly. We should be doing everything within our power to stop further climate catastrophes. And we should damn well stop denying that the climate is changing before our eyes.