Jenna Price | Why on earth aren't we panicking about the IPCC report?

You won't believe it. Global temperatures are rising! As ACM's Alex Crowe wrote earlier this week. "Temperatures in Australia have increased by 1.4 degrees over the last 110 years and it is more likely than not global temperatures will reach 1.5 degrees of warming in the near term."

I know. We should all be panicking about the IPCC report (the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) which tells us the clock is tick, tick, ticking. And we should all be panicking here in Australia, where we have both lakes and fish dying as if we were subject to a demon curse (yeah, the demon curse of longstanding government negligence). Where we have people's homes and businesses burnt to a crisp in bushfires on the reg. Where we have people's home and businesses swept away by floods on the reg.

Sorry to be so casual in my language but it's my way of standing with independent David Pocock, who this week was criticised by a creepy Sky guy (CSG) for wearing a Tame Impala t-shirt on the way back from supporting a Tennis Canberra event. Now I'll confess my knowledge of Tame Impala only developed after Elephant was covered by the Wiggles (which reveals my current stage of life - grandparenting). Still Aussie music t-shirt day should be every day. And taking climate action should be every day which is Pocock's approach, t-shirt or no.

When floods approach, when fires race over hills, we spring into action to protect lives, homes and businesses. For some reason, the IPCC doesn't have the same impact.

But I reckon things might be changing. And those rising global temperatures are the key. Matthew Hornsey is an academic at the University of Queensland and his research findings are both counter-intuitive and pretty encouraging.

The hotter it gets, the more likely conservatives are to abandon climate scepticism. Hornsey and his team looked at data over 10 years and found climate change scepticism was much more likely to be associated with support for conservative political parties. That's not surprising. We saw the way Tony Abbott carried on like a raw onion in his attempt to get us to believe hotter weather was better weather. Gang colours: the raw onion eaters versus those of us who prefer our fried onions on a democracy sausage.

BUT! Here's the good news. Climate change scepticism declined when annual global temperatures rose the previous year. People got that the whole melting-icebergs-with-lone-polar-bear is urgent. And when I say people, I mean political conservatives. Tasmanian Liberal Bridget Archer is well onboard with addressing climate change and trying to drag her godforsaken party with her.

"Rising global annual temperatures have the power to update beliefs among those most in need of converting to the climate cause," says Hornsey.

As we hear more about global temperature change, says Hornsey, conservatives have swung behind the need for climate action.

"Everything everywhere is a record, eventually that seeps into people's minds."

Seeping is fine - but where's the relevant and necessary drive to take actual personal action which might cost individuals and will definitely cost countries more?

"My sense is that there is a relatively small group of people in Australia who have fear in their belly about climate change. They report feeling concerned but not so concerned, they want to pay for it or make sacrifices."

But he has clear memories of a drought in Queensland. Big rains in 2001 but by 2007, the dams were draining, looked like they were going to dry up altogether. Citizens policed each other, shamed each other.

"That's what happens when people have got fear in their bellies. I don't sense that fear as a mainstream sentiment on climate action."

And he reminds me of the culture wars around the Rudd/Gillard climate policies. Folks clamouring for support for climate action but as soon as we get a mining tax or a carbon tax, support slumps.

"It's an inconvenient truth that climate action is costly and painful."

Although not as costly and painful as the impact of fish dying in Menindee (NSW) and Kangaroo Lake (Victoria).

So why don't we get more worked up about all of this? Public opinion has taken a long time to get on board. There is an organised climate change denial machine and, says John Dryzek of the University of Canberra's Centre for Deliberative Democracy, Murdoch media is complicit. It's the kind of thinking which says you should give both sides a go. How there are other more important problems. How expensive climate change is. What about. Whatabout. Whatabout.

Facts are facts. Scientists tell us that the environment is in serious trouble and those of us who think short term are selfish gits (ok, scientists do not use words like selfish or git but they do tell us that we have an emergency and most work to stop that emergency).

Dryzek says Australian voters backed the Greens and the teals at the federal election because we were concerned about climate change.

"But the degree of sentiment goes up and down with time. It is hard to maintain a high level of support because it's not like you pass a piece of legislation and that's it.

Turns out we only see catastrophes in our future. But the folks in Menindee and at Kangaroo Lake are seeing it right now. We need to stoke the fire in our belly before we have another round of fires on our horizons. The IPCC says we can do it. More conservatives are on board than ever before. Ignore the Sky idiots who concentrate on the pointless and pathetic. Read Merchants of Doubt by Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway instead.

Safeguard our future. Dryzek's right: "Sometimes you have to harden up. You have to do the right thing rather than the expedient thing."