Last Friday, on a whim, I created an open thread called Winds of Change, Comfortably Numb. Like the song from the video, the winds of change are blowing -- quite literally, too: the climate is changing, in social & political ways as well as ecological terms.¹

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The future's in the air
I can feel it everywhere
Blowing with the wind of change
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New studies were published over the weekend that serve to reinforce some previous data about the issue of global climate change. In his piece Warming and Storms, Uncertainty and Ethics, Andrew C. Revkin writes about how those studies may impact our approach to human-induced global warming:

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Over the weekend, a pair of very different climate studies — one physical, one social — illustrated two uncomfortable, and related, realities confronting society as it grapples with possible responses to human-driven global warming.
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Revkin is right: both studies, particularly when combined, leave us with some disturbing things to mull over.

From the Wall Street Journal,

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Global-Warming Study Weighs Impact of Human Action

By GAUTAM NAIK

May 15, 2008; Page A10

A new study says humans have changed the world's environment more by warming the climate than by directly encroaching on habitats.

The research, published Wednesday in the journal Nature, also establishes a link between climate change and narrower, continental changes such as the earlier spring flight of butterflies in California, the earlier release of pollen in the Netherlands and the increased growth of pine trees in Mongolia.
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An international team of over a dozen scientists, led by Cynthia Rosenzweig of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and the Center for Climate Systems Research at Columbia University in New York, showed very strong indications based on studies done on a continental scale.

In other news,

Posted in full by permission of Nick Benton, owner/editor of the Fall Church News Press. Take a look at the new format of the online version of his weekly newspaper--recognized as the best local paper in Northern VA.

In the cover story of the April 2008 edition of National Geographic magazine, “Africa’s Ragged Edge: Journey Into the Sahel,” author Paul Salopek, photographer Pascal Maitre and the editors do a terrific job introducing readers to perhaps the most important region of the world that no one, almost, has heard about.
The Sahara is known, the Sahel is not.

Yet the Sahel is perhaps the largest contiguous arable region on the planet, dwarfing the entire continental United States in scale. From coast to coast, from Dakar on the west to the Red Sea on the east, it is at least one-and-a-half times the width of the U.S. Presently, despite its dry and undeveloped condition, it is home to an estimated 55 million mostly poverty-stricken and ethno-politically divided people.

As the National Geographic article points out, the Sahel’s dimensions have shifted over the centuries due to the amount of rainfall. Just as the arable land in the U.S. plains can devolve from agriculturally-fertile to dust bowls, so it goes for the Sahel. The Sahara Desert can encroach on its land under drought conditions, or it can recede when there is rain. At one point a thousand years ago, much of it was fertile and lush, and in that era Timbuktu on the Niger River in modern Mali was the seat of a rich and powerful regime.

"Climate" is a word with several definitions. From Answer.com, here's the dictionary definition:

1. The meteorological conditions, including temperature, precipitation, and wind, that characteristically prevail in a particular region.
2. A region of the earth having particular meteorological conditions: lives in a cold climate.
3. A prevailing condition or set of attitudes in human affairs: a climate of unrest.

For additional clarity (at risk of exceeding "fair use" restrictions), here's the thesaurus listing:

1. The totality of surrounding conditions and circumstances affecting growth or development: ambiance, atmosphere, environment, medium, milieu, mise en scène, surroundings, world.
2. A prevailing quality, as of thought, behavior, or attitude: mood, spirit, temper, tone.

So, to truly address "climate change" in today's world, should we not address both functional definitions -- namely, not just the meteorological but also the social/political?

Is Gore our Gort?

An Op-Editude

Al Gore’s real and riveting message about global warming may seem alien to many, especially the world’s behemoth energy producers who envision their day of reckoning if they obey his admonitions and follow his teachings. And to political knuckleheads like President Bush, who steadfastly refuse to watch his award-winning call-to-arms film for reasons that defy logic and who, like a befuddled ship’s captain afraid to change course for fear his crew would criticize him for setting bad compass headings to begin with, prefers the pride of self-righteousness as he and his Panglossian world view down with the ship.

In his speech yesterday in the Oslo, Norway, where he accepted the Nobel Peace Prize shared with Mr. Pachauri, the Chairman of the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Mr. Albert Arnold Gore told his audience there and those of us watching from afar that unless we, the inhabitants of Planet Earth, change our profligate energy ways, and soon, the tiny spherical blue ball we live on will reach a point from which returning to the safety we once knew will only be accomplished with the greatest of efforts of the human race working together.

And since we don’t have a great track record in that department, there is, in my view, cause for worry.