Powerful Warm Weather We're Havin'

Climate is a squirrely kind of thing. It's composed of weather, which for temperate climes is a wild and variable beast. So it's hard to discern patterns in the sea of change. Regardless of what the experts say, in any given location the changes in climate are a matter of forty steps forward, thirty steps back, and a dozen in random sideways lunges.

And if you go by personal memory, it's even worse. "Back when I was a kid, we had real weather, sonny." Yeah, right. But it's undeniable that winters in Wisconsin were worse (or better, depending on your point of view) when I was a kid. In fact, they were colder and snowier when I moved back here twenty years ago. Today, instead of the "gales of November", I'm looking out at a sunny, temperate day. Sweatshirt weather, to be sure. But for mid-November Wisconsin, this is a heat wave.

Makes me wonder. Global climate change deniers are now a tiny minority of reputable scientists, but powerful interests continue to play a delaying game. They couldn't pull it off without some level of popular support, which, sadly, they still have in this country. Alarmist predictions of disasters have eroded public confidence that environmentalists know what the heck they're talking about. And the message is unwelcome to most: We're living on our capital, cutbacks are inevitable, conserve, sell the Hummers and Tahoes, restrict what people and companies can do with their own land.

So it's hardly surprising that Joe and Jill Six-pack pooh-pooh the ravings of the tree-hugger fringe. But the evidence of their own senses is growing undeniable. At least we'll be spared drivel about how global warming is a good thing, with ocean temperatures driving longer-lived hurricanes and the disappearance of the Arctic ice pack raising ocean levels.

Too bad the profiteers managed to delay this long, though. The experiment is already well under way, and we've no options now but to ride it out as best we can. The world's poor will be harder hit, no question. But at least we'll have the satisfaction of watching the deniers' gated seaside residences in Aruba and Cancun get pounded, then inundated. You can run, guys, but you can't hide. It's a big planet, but all of it's got weather.