It’s so hot – it feels like climate change

Here's my Sunday column:

If there is any topic that all Americans engage in, it has to be the weather.

Americans of all stripes can quickly strike up a conversation about how nice the weather is, or how horrible — or how unpredictable.

The old-timers have always had an advantage in this area. They could tell everyone engaged in a chat that recent weather events were no match for the heat wave of ’44 or the ice storm of ’67, or the drought of ’53.

But now, even a 7-year-old can outdo the tales of the gray beards because most of this nation’s extreme weather conditions have taken place over the last few years. Records set in the 19th Century are broken on a daily basis.

I don’t know if this signals the apocalyptic climate change that environmentalists have predicted, but something’s going on out there — out in the atmosphere.

In just the past several years, sections of the country have endured unprecedented floods, snowstorms, tornadoes, hurricanes, hail storms, droughts, wildfires, crop damage and power outages. We’ve even experienced earthquakes in the strangest places.

I realize that no single storm or multi-month weather pattern necessarily signals the onset of permanent climate disruptions.

But surely it’s time for our political leaders to give climate change a second look after ideologues have denigrated the subject for a decade.

Cap and trade policies have been belittled by cute conservative talking points — “cap and tax” — while liberals’ insistence of impending doom also skews the debate.

Nonetheless, I suspect a lot of Americans now wonder whether the higher consumer costs associated with reducing greenhouse gases are preferable to the catastrophic expenses leveled by chaotic weather. I wonder if farmers, who are suffering from heart-breaking losses of crops this summer, would be at the top of that list.

In fact, the deadly heat waves gripping the nation, and all their damaging effects, are convincing a wide swath of Americans that global temperatures are rising.

In a University of Texas poll taken July 12-16, 70 percent of respondents said they think the climate is changing. Those fringies denying a change fell to 15 percent.

Perhaps the poll respondents now assume that the price tag of destruction, plus huge insurance payouts for floods, crops, homes, businesses, medical care and life lost will eclipse any increase in utility bills caused by cap and trade solutions.

My theory is that Congress will take action on climate change when the heat and storms in the South become so unbearable that they disrupt the high school and college football season.

From a political standpoint, it is interesting to note that most of the intense weather-related damage hit the Red States.

As a nation, we can debate how much of climate change is man-made. We can argue over how soon the changes will have a substantial, global impact. And we can discuss whether climatologists can truly deduce the comparative weather and atmospheric conditions of hundreds of thousands of years ago — or a few million years ago.

Of course, carbon-dating and other methods deployed by our top scientists are preposterous to those Neanderthals — or, should I say, Neanderthal deniers — who believe the earth is just 6,000 years old.

What now passes for a climate change debate on talk-radio and cable TV is the equivalent of two blowhards sitting on bar stools attempting to pontificate about the latest high-tech methods for conducting heart surgery.

It may be time for those who call climate change a “hoax” to admit that the economics of severe weather has reached a tipping point.

What’s obvious is that all of this has political implications. Experts say the full impact of the inclement weather will manifest itself in October when food prices will rise significantly and the inevitable stories about inadequate responses to weather damage by FEMA and the Department of Agriculture will play prominently in the pre-election 24/7 news cycle.

And then there’s this: Farmers say the effects of sharply reduced corn supplies to feed livestock will mean that the country must become accustomed to tough, chewy steak. No true-blue American voter in the Heartland will stand for an inferior T-bone.

Of course, all of this is bad news for the re-election prospects of President Obama.

Some say the changing climate is part of a cyclical pattern — God’s will. Agnostics say that it all started with the Big Bang followed by rapid global population growth and the spread of the industrial revolution to most corners of the planet.

I don’t know. But, as a political junkie, not a science geek, it’s clear to me that Mother Nature is a Mitt Romney supporter.