BIG IDEAS WHOSE TIME IS COMING A LOT SOONER THAN WE THINK

By David Harris

During the first week of February, I was over at my friend Arnold’s house to watch the Super Bowl, standing on his terrace during halftime.  It had been snowing here on the highest elevations the week before but now it was shirtsleeve weather, as high as the low 80’s in the inland counties.  Down in Texas, ice storms had closed half the state, New York City was snowed in after having been balmy two weeks earlier, it was drier in north China than it had been in two hundred years, the Arctic was warmer than anyone could remember and parts of the Midwest colder, Antarctica continued to melt, Australia’s north coast had been flooded for weeks, the same with Brazil, and Europe felt like a meat locker.  And now Arnold and I were watching springtime in San Francisco roll through in the middle of winter.

Since Arnold is the smartest person I know, and is paid large sums of money to share his intelligence with companies and governments, I used him to check my bearings.

“It’s happening just like the climate scientists said it would, isn’t it?” I asked.

“Actually it’s happening bigger, faster, and more widely than the computer models predicted,” he corrected me. “It seems highly likely that climate destabilization is upon us.”

We both let that thought hang there for a minute before continuing.

“It’s hard to get your mind around,” I finally offered. [Read more…]