Can we enjoy a hot summer anymore?

But it doesn't feel so happy any more. Attitudes have changed. There is, as it were, a mental cloud over hot weather.

We have known for some time that global warming is real. The dispute about its causes is past. Those who said that is it not caused by human activity, namely the burning of carbon fuels in the two centuries since the Industrial Revolution, are now as outside the discourse as flat-earthers are.

But knowing something intellectually is different from feeling it in our bones and knowing with certainty that it is true.

We have witnessed the stark pictures of catastrophe after catastrophe, and they have made the abstract idea of global warming real for us. We see the human consequences, and that is much more persuasive than statistics and scientific argument.

Devastating floods in Libya and China, bushfires in Spain and Greece, massive storms in the US have all made us more worried about fires closer to home as the weather heats up, particularly as this month is likely to be Canberra's hottest September on record.

Research published by NRMA Insurance (which is not connected to the roadside help organisation) found that two-thirds of Canberrans said that seeing recent extreme weather overseas had made them more concerned about the impacts of fires closer to home.

The company runs what it calls a Wild Weather Tracker which documents wild weather around the world (it is in the obvious interest of insurance companies to track wild weather).

And that, too, is why we may have mixed feelings about hot weather. Insurance premiums will go up, particularly in areas prone to fire and flood.

Global warming has moved from being an intellectual debate, if not anymore about whether it is happening, to how best to try to mitigate it. It is now about how it will affect each of us.

A week ago, the Bureau of Meteorology declared that two major climate events were underway: the El Nino weather pattern where the differences in temperatures across the Pacific Ocean will mean a hotter, drier summer here, and a "positive" Indian Ocean dipole which will exacerbate the same result.

Neither is anything to do with global warming - but they, combined with global warming and its relentless heating of the oceans and the atmosphere, mean that excessive heat is on the way.

It may well be that recent wet summers will keep the very worst of the bushfires away in the coming summer - but do not be in doubt: global warming is real and coming our way.

There may be a silver lining to this dark cloud. The growing obviousness of the cost of climate change may make political action more likely.

Even in the United States, attitudes are changing. A poll published earlier this week indicated that extreme weather, including the summer of floods and fire in the US itself, had made more Americans believe that they had personally felt the impact of climate change.

Nearly 90 per cent of Americans said they had experienced at least one extreme weather event in the past five years - including drought, extreme heat, severe storms, wildfires or flooding - and that was up from 80 per cent only a few months earlier.

It means that heatwaves do not bring us the pleasure they once did - but it also means that real action may be closer.

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Responsibility for election comment is taken by John-Paul Moloney of 121 Marcus Clarke Street, Canberra. Published by Federal Capital Press of Australia Pty Ltd.