Here’s a somewhat astonishing fact: Anyone in the world younger than 27 years-old has never experienced a single month in which the average global temperature was cooler than the 20th Century average.

In fact, this past July marked the 329th consecutive month of above-average global temperatures. It was February 1985 the last time the planet experienced a cooler-than-normal month, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

That’s quite a track record— one that anyone without an ideological ax to grind, or a large financial stake in continuing to deny climate change, might recognize as a trend.

Indeed, even those with a vested interest are coming around. One of the most vocal critics of climate change evidence, Dr. Richard Muller, a professor of physics at UC-Berkeley recently completed what he called the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature Project. Muller’s research was heavily funded by the Charles Koch Charitable Foundation, named for its founder, the ultra-conservative oil magnate who is one of the primary funders of the climate change denial industry, as well as conservative politicans.

Muller’s three-year study was supposed to be the definitive word and he anticipated his findings would demolish the credibility of those who have raised alarms about the warming planet. Instead, Muller announced this week that his comprehensive study has confirmed global warming, and he’s concluded that human activities are the cause of it.

Given that the rise in global temperatures is only accelerating, and that the vast majority of scientists now acknowledge that climate change is contributing to the increased frequency of severe weather (droughts, heat waves, intense storms), you might think that more Americans would recognize the dangers and be pushing politicians to take action. Instead, an issue that was high on the list of voter concerns fifteen years ago (when the evidence for climate change was less definitive than it is today) has all but fallen off the radar.

Unfortunately, the issue—which used to concern Americans across the political spectrum— has taken on a distinctly partisan cast. Ten years ago, plenty of Republicans, including Gov. Tim Pawlenty and Gov. Mitt Romney, were strong advocates of action to combat climate change. Yet today, when the dangers of a warming planet are so much more apparent than even a decade ago, Republican politicians are in virtual lockstep in their denial of climate change, or at least of the suggestion that human activities are the primary cause.

They offer no data that could support an alternative theory for the planet’s distinct warming, but who needs data when ideology provides all you need to know?

And it doesn’t hurt that the political cash is flowing so freely from those with a financial interest in spreading uncertainty. As the largest financial backer of most Republican candidates (and even a few Democrats), the oil and coal industries have enormous influence over the political direction of the GOP, and the country— and for now that means that addressing climate change is off the table, even as its effects intrude ever more frequently into the day-to-day experience of most Americans.

Throw in conservative media, like Fox News, where climate change is addressed primarily through the rolling of eyeballs, and mainstream media, where political debate is rarely elevated above he-said, she-said, and critically important issues don’t stand a chance for a fair discussion.

Add to this a general American reluctance to accept inconvenient truths, especially ones that that might require modest adjustments in our lifestyles, and you have a recipe for political paralysis.

It couldn’t come at a worse time. As environmental author Bill McKibben wrote recently in a much-discussed essay in Rolling Stone, “Global Warming’s Terrifying New Math,” we are quite literally running out of time to limit global temperature increases to between four and five degrees Fahrenheit, or two degrees Celsius. According to the latest climate models, we can add 565 gigatons of additional carbon dioxide to the atmosphere by midcentury and still limit temperature increases to that four or five degrees.

It should be said that temperature increases of this magnitude would still be very disruptive, and make the changes we’ve already seen look insignificant by comparison. For a community like Ely, where the average annual temperature is currently about 38 degrees, a five-degree increase would bring us a climate like current-day Rochester, but most likely with less precipitation. Under this scenario, the prospect of maintaining the forest and lake environment we enjoy today, and that draws so many people to the region every year, would be essentially zero. And remember, this is realistically the best-case scenario.

So what are the prospects of limiting global carbon emissions to 565 gigatons? Without an immediate and major change in political direction, there is no chance at all. Currently, global emissions are running at more than 30 gigatons annually and emissions continue to grow. At that rate, notes McKibben, we’ll blow past 565 gigatons in a little over 16 years, and will virtually guarantee warming on a scale climate scientists shudder to contemplate.

For a long while, energy experts assumed that the finite reserves of fossil fuels, particularly oil, would eventually save us from ourselves and force society to transition to power sources that don’t produce climate-warming gases. But recent changes in the technology of extraction have greatly expanded the known reserves of oil, as well as gas.

Indeed, writes McKibben, according to a report by the Carbon Tracker Initiative, a team of London financial analysts who educate investors on the portfolio risks posed by climate change, the already-known coal, oil, and gas reserves worldwide, if consumed, would generate 2,795 gigatons of carbon dioxide. That’s five times more than climate scientists believe we can safely burn.

In other words, in order to head off truly catastrophic climate changes, 80 percent of those reserves must be left in the ground. Given that these reserves constitute the bulk of the stock valuation of most energy companies, or the chief means of funding the economies and societal needs of dozens of energy-producing nations, the prospect that the vast majority of this potential energy will be left untapped is remote.

Which is, perhaps, one reason that climate scientists are feeling increasingly desperate. These are people on the front lines who are documenting on a daily basis the enormous changes taking place across the world, but particularly in the higher latitudes, where the impact of the warming climate has been so much more dramatic than other parts of the planet.

And still the world ignores the danger, even as it becomes ever more apparent that the costs of doing so will be extraordinarily high.

For those who can still find comfort in their denial, you should know that ideology won’t protect you when the heat is really on. Nor will glib dismissal of climate research, which is increasingly sophisticated and well-supported by years of observed data.

Too often, I’ve heard the old saw, “they can’t predict tomorrow’s weather, how can they predict it 30 years from now!” But it’s actually much easier to model long-term trends, like climate change, than the day-to-day fluctuations of the weather. There is no doubt that the planet is warming— that argument is settled among scientists,

The only remaining question is whether we care enough about our kids and our grandkids, not to mention the rest of life on the planet, to do anything about it.