Do You "Believe" in Climate Change? What Will it Take?

As we suffer through yet another sweltering 100 plus degree day while horrendous fires destroy our forests in the west, ceaseless drought sucks the life out of our crops in the Great Plains and destructive storms pound the east, it got me to thinking about what it will take for society to fully accept that we are changing the climate in dangerous ways.

Let's also not forget the 87 degree March temperatures (St. Louis) that followed the winter that wasn't that followed the year with the highest weather related disaster costs in history.

If the absolutely insane weather that we have been experiencing for YEARS now doesn't wake us up, what will?

Do we have our collective heads in the sand?  Perhaps we don't like what man caused climate change means so we simply ignore it and hope it goes away?

What exactly will it take to wake us up? How hot does it need to get? How much of our forests need to burn? How much of our crops need to fail? Just how awful, how powerful, how dangerous do the storms need to get?

Is there a "magic temperature number" that will wake us up? 115 degrees?  120 degrees? Perhaps if we double the number of days over 100?  triple? 

Maybe when it hits us in the wallet and food prices double?  triple? 

Or, maybe a Katrina like hurricane or two?  or three?

and here we are worried about "gay marriage" and whether or not denying health care to 50 million people is Constitutional?   The phrase "arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic" comes to mind.

What the hell are we doing?

It's a collective denial on a national scale (yes, it is national.  No other country rejects man caused climate change like the US does). 

I'm told that the way to get through to the public about climate change is with positive messaging - to tell you how great the changes we need to make will be. That changing your light bulbs and getting a Prius will save you money and everything will be just fine.

That would be a lie.

I'm sick of lies and can't do it. Lies got us into this mess and it will take the ugly truth will get us out - if we can pull our collective heads out of the sand and ACT! 

We either wake up and face this thing, or we suffer the consequences. The choices will be hard, very hard, but the alternatives will be much worse.

It's time to face reality - we have no choice.

Please follow my Patch on climate change/global warming to participate in a conversation about what The National Science Foundation has called the most important puzzle humankind has attempted to solve.

Post #5 in the series will be published shortly.