By GREG OLMSTED

“Please give us something optimistic to take away, here,” Seth Borenstein, the moderator asked his panel. “Something a little … less pessimistic than we have been hearing.” Berrien Moore, the Director of the National Weather Center replied, “There are tipping points politically. And I point only to the Tobacco case. For how many years were we told, ‘Oh no, there is no health risk.’ And then finally the body politic said, ‘That is just idiotic. Clearly there is a health risk.’ And it switched.”

Well, the switch has occurred among Americans, including the majority of Republicans, too. Survey results by the University of Texas show that three quarters (75%) of Americans accept the science of climate change. Similarly, the National Surveys on Energy and Environment results show that seventy percent of Americans believe in climate change.

But what of the body politic? When will the body politic switch, too?

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Seth Borenstein and Berrien Moore, question and answer, recorded at the Opening Plenary, Climate Change and Extreme Weather: Planning for an Uncertain Future, October 9, 2015, Society of Environmental Journalists 25th Annual Conference, Norman, Oklahoma, by Greg Olmsted. From left to right: Kathleen Tierney (Director, Natural Hazards Center and Professor, Department of Sociology and the Institute of Behavioral Science, University of Colorado, Boulder), Berrien Moore (Director, National Weather Center; Dean, College of Atmospheric & Geographic Sciences; Chesapeake Energy Corporation Chair in Climate Studies; and Vice President, Weather & Climate Programs, University of Oklahoma), Seth Borenstein (Science Writer, The Associated Press; moderator), Kathryn Sullivan (NOAA Administrator and Under Secretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration), Jonathan Overpeck (Thomas R. Brown Distinguished Professor, Regents’ Professor of Geosciences and Atmospheric Sciences, and Co-Director, Institute of the Environment, University of Arizona).