Oregon: Associate professor of political science still wonders why so few people really believe in the global warming hoax

Hurricanes, floods and wildfires – but Washington won't talk global warming | Jules Boykoff | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

America is seeing record-breaking extreme weather, yet the US political class is paralysed in climate change negligence
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In 2007, then New York Times environmental reporter Andrew Revkin pondered the possibility that thanks to the vast geographical expanse of the United States, "there is almost never a shared sense of meteorological misery." This, he noted cautiously, might help explain why global warming had not become a front-burner political issue, unlike geographically tighter places like Europe where elected leaders were tackling the problem with more vim.

But recent record-breaking "meteorological misery" from coast to coast is making it clear that severe weather may well be the new normal.
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Same goes for Obama. How many deaths and billions in economic damage from extreme weather would it take for him to take action to mitigate climate change and, for example, put the kibosh on the Keystone XL pipeline? If New York were transmogrified into the Okefenokee swamp, would that be enough? How about if southern California were turned into a desertified deadzone?

We're living in unconventional political times in the United States, so it's time to dispense with conventional political thinking. Climate scientists are telling us with increasing confidence that the impacts of climate change are already playing out, and not just in the Antarctic where photogenic ice shelves are clattering into the sea. Climate change is already expressing itself as wild weather. It's blowing in the wind.

Jules Boykoff | guardian.co.uk

Jules Boykoff is an associate professor of political science at Pacific University in Oregon. He writes on activism, climate change, and the politics of sports