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Introduction: Humans Love a Great Disaster Movie We humans love a great disaster movie. Volcanoes, earthquakes, blizzards, heatwaves, asteroid strikes, tornadoes, hurricanes, and tsunamis have all been made into pretty good movies that keep us entertained. Similarly, on the man- made side, plane crashes, boats sinking, terrorist attacks, and wars have kept us watching for seemingly endless hours. All these movies have one thing in common - the action all happens within within a short span of time at a rate that the characters can't keep up with or usually do anything about.

Conversely, there have been few movies made about climate change. One of the few was The Day After Tomorrow, and in order to make the storyline work, events that could only happen over years had to be compressed into a few days. Climate change simply is not exciting enough to grab and hold our attention. You or I could go about our business tomorrow without any fear that climate change would do something bad to us that day. Or the next day. Or the next.

This is precisely why climate change should be so concerning. Like a slow-developing cancer or heart disease, we're going to feel just fine for a very long time until suddenly we don't. Or we're going to feel fine for all of our lives until suddenly our children don't. And yet we continue to ignore what's coming - despite the fact we have a pretty certain cause and effect relationship, a fairly convergent forecast set of potential outcomes that are not in the least pleasant - perhaps not even survivable - and a clear call to action.

Our response has been underwhelming. It is not just that we do nothing, it is also that those who represent us in the political world, and those that serve as political pundits with an agenda, often go to great lengths to prevent anything being done by anybody. It's not important for the purposes of this class to debate politics - academia by and large is not about debating politics. It IS necessary, though, to examine facts and evidence and draw reasoned conclusions - and to act on those reasoned conclusions for the benefit of our society and our way of life.