Wishful thinking.

Via E2 Wire:

A senior Obama administration scientist said this year’s heat and Western wildfires are altering perceptions of climate change in the United States.

Jane Lubchenco, who heads the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said in Australia on Friday that many have previously regarded climate change as a “nebulous concept,” The Associated Press reports.

“Many people around the world are beginning to appreciate that climate change is under way, that it’s having consequences that are playing out in real time and, in the United States at least, we are seeing more and more examples of extreme weather and extreme climate-related events,” she said at a university in Canberra, AP reports.

“People’s perceptions in the United States, at least, are in many cases beginning to change as they experience something first-hand that they at least think is directly attributable to climate change,” she said.

Lubchenco “said that while it was impossible to attribute any single weather event to climate change, the pattern of extreme events was consistent with forecast consequences of increasing greenhouse gas emissions,” AP reports.