Schmittner, lead author of a Feb. 14 article in the journal Global Biogeochemical Cycles, said his modeling indicates that if global emissions continue on a "business as usual" path for the rest of the century, the Earth will warm by 7.2 degrees Fahrenheit by 2100. If emissions do not drop to zero until 2300, he calculated, the temperature rise at that point would be more than 15 degrees Fahrenheit.

"This is tremendous," Schmittner said. "I was struck by the fact that the warming continues much longer even after emissions have declined. . . . Our actions right now will have consequences for many, many generations. Not just for a hundred years, but thousands of years."

Consequences for thousands of years. Global temperatures on average 7.2 degrees Farenheit higher by the end of this century. This is real, and its effects will be beyond what any of us can possibly understand. The deaths of millions of people, perhaps billions, from disease, famine and war. Massive immigration on scales unseen in human history. Political and social cataclysms. The largest extinction of species since the end of the age of the dinosaurs. An apocalypse of our own making.

Sometimes it seems humanity is willfully blind to the real dangers it faces. I imagine that this generation of climate scientists feel a bit like modern day Cassandras of Troy, doomed to know the future but unable to convince enough people that dire consequences await us, our children and our grandchildren should we fail to act upon their warnings of doom. Yet, this should be one of the major issues each candidate should be addressing, and not just in passing with platitudes and vague rhetoric in their campaign stump speeches. We need to know from them what specific steps they plan to take to deal with this issue. More even than than that we need them to take the lead on this issue, to acknowledge its critical importance to our future, and to push back against the easy conventional wisdom in the media and the corporate propaganda which counsels for caution, delay and "further study" of the problem. Because our time to do anything about this threat is running out.

Indeed, the only "ticking time bomb" scenario we face isn't one created by terrorists, and there is no Jack Bauer who can torture the people responsible and then ride to the rescue in the nick of time. No the weapon of mass destruction we need to be concerned with is not a suitcase bomb hand delivered by Osama Bin Ladin, but our continued use of, and reliance upon carbon based fuels. Isn't it time we asked our political leaders to deal with this threat? No, let me re-phrase that: Isn't time we demanded that our leaders take action against this menace?

And it certainly makes more sense for our media to grill the candidates on this issue than on the trivial pursuit of who said what nasty terrible thing about whom this week. Because months and years from now these campaign follies will be forgotten, merely footnotes in someone's political memoir. But climate change and the devastation it brings will still be with us.