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With Tucson's climate just about ideal in December, it's difficult to think about what the weather will be like in six months, let alone 65 years. But it's essential to do so. The alternative is to ignore the plight that future generations are likely to face as a result of predicted changes in the climate.

One climate change study after another — the most recent published in the fall — indicates that the consequences of not thinking that far in advance could be cataclysmic. The recent study deals with what's likely to happen to our climate by 2071.

Prepared by scientists at Purdue University in Indiana, the study says "dramatic ecological, economic and social consequences" could result from an increase in the number of extremely hot days and additional precipitation that computer models are forecasting.

The implications of the study are clear: If we regard the consequences of climate change seriously today, we can take important steps to mitigate what happens in the distant future.

The most cumbersome problem today results from the collision of science and politics.

For example, despite all the research documenting temperature change, some members of Congress, as well President Bush, question whether global warming is a man-made phenomenon or part of a naturally occurring weather cycle.

The question is not necessarily a spurious one, but a lot depends on who's raising it. For some politicians the question is elicited by concern for the short-term economic impact of making changes to reduce global warming, rather than by any interest in serious scientific inquiry.

The political intervention is sometimes more sinister than that, as we saw last June when Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, made what is clearly an intimidating request of three scientists involved in global-warming research.

The researchers, including Malcolm Hughes of the University of Arizona's Tree Ring Laboratory, were able to document a rapid warming trend in the Northern Hemisphere over the last 100 years. The work was widely publicized and evidently rankled Barton.

In an article published in the Star last July, Thomas W. Swetnam and Karl Flessa two of Hughes' colleagues, noted Barton attempted to "harass and intimidate" the researchers by "requesting all data, documentation of methods and computer code pertaining to all their past research and records of all grants and contracts received throughout their entire careers."

Scientists can measure the increases in heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere — produced by sources as diverse as fossil-fuel-burning electric generating plants, carbon dioxide from automobile emissions and methane from decomposing plants in the ocean — and report them objectively. But the information inevitably is interpreted subjectively by those who are politically motivated.

As the findings of the Purdue study indicate, that's a potentially dangerous game. Noah Diffenbaugh, who headed the Purdue research team, observed that the predicted climate changes are so large they could substantially disrupt the U.S. economy. Gradual increases in extremely hot weather and precipitation patterns would affect roads, bridges and other infrastructure.

Sen. John McCain had it right when he commented, during an October meeting with the Star's editorial board, that it's not a question of "if" the nation acts on climate change, but "when."

"Whether we act or not is just a matter of time," he said. "Whether we act in time so that our kids and our grandkids don't pay a huge price is unknown."