The reality of catastrophic climate change does not seem to be getting
through to people, and it is not hard to understand why. Global warm-
ing is dismissed as speculation by the president and Congress, and
cited—if at all—by the news media in confusing tit-for-tat exchanges
full of scientific jargon. The small band of skeptics is given equal
weight with the overwhelming majority of climate scientists, and their
bantering about computer models, aerosols, and ice cores just con-
fuses the public.
The cold winter of 2002 to 2003 was fodder for the morning shock
jocks. “Where’s your global warming now?” they asked. But the scien-
tists are telling us that climate change is not simply a global hot foot; it
is subtler and far more dangerous than that. Instead, we have entered
an era of profound climatic instability, with more severe storms and
great variations in temperature and rainfall. The broiling summer
Europe endured in 2003 was a very dramatic example of the trend.
The essays in this book are reports from the climate front. As Ross
Gelbspan notes in the introduction, the science of global warming is no
longer being seriously debated. It is real, and it is here. From China to New
York, minor changes in what were fairly established weather patterns have
already produced profound and permanent effects on local ecosystems.
Fish species are disappearing, with ripples throughout the food chain.
Birds and butterflies are moving, turning up in places they have never been
seen before. Some plants are dying, others thriving as manmade climatic
changes accelerate.
PREFACE
vii