According to an often-told story, a frog will try to jump out if you drop it into hot water but the hapless creature will stay, and eventually die, if you put it in a pan of cool water and slowly bring it to a boil.

A United Nations report to be released in Paris on Feb. 2 will include the strongest warning yet that humans are stoking global warming that may cause colossal damage to nature if, like the doomed frog, they ignore rising temperatures.

Yet in a world where millions of individuals are unable to quit smoking or avoid obesity, action to curb global warming seems a tall order, partly since it will affect future generations hardest.

And, like the fabled boiled frog, people may find it hard to tackle an invisible threat.

"Our evolutionary biology ... equips us to respond far more easily and naturally to a threat from a snake, or a fang, or a claw or a spider than from a threat that can only be understood by the use of abstract reasoning," Gore said in a presentation in Oslo in 2006.

http://www.enn.com/today.html?id=12088

[In the latest effort to combat global warming, scientists propose that helicopters and airplanes should start tugging giant snake, fang, or spider shaped objects on sweltering hot days.]