And this is why a world revolving around money is always going to stop us moving forward.

Boil one ocean at a time mate :)

I think finding the will is challenging, but not impossible. The question is how? And can it be done by reason? Or will it come as a response to a real catastrophe in the developed world (or some kind of Ethiopa-level tragedy in the developing world)?

The disappearance of arctic ice and flooding of a few small islands doesn't seem to cut it. But it's so far removed from the "reality" of daily life that it's no surprise we can't relate it to our own behaviour.

I am put in mind of the holocaust exhibition at the Imperial War museum and the Scott exhibition at the National History. I think there must be more to be done in terms of converting current behaviour and climate models into something people can relate to, that puts them in a context.

I wonder if there isn't a worthy little web-app here (assuming it hasn't be created already), along the lines of modelling the effects of temperature rise on a world map (assuming there's enough cogent science to do it) and allowing people to "play" with the temperature and trends... showing where the carbon is coming from etc...

I don't even think that a real catastrophe is going to change peoples attitudes. Some are greedy, some are ignorant, some are selfish.

As for a web app, I'm not sure that the amount of data that needs to be crunched could be handled by a web app, well not without a huge horizontally scaled expensive map reduce cluster behind it.

I find it hard to believe any data that is in the public eye right now, purely because there's always something to contradict it. I think we lack the data overall.