What If This Summer Isn't the 'New Normal'?

If you follow climate-concerned bloggers and tweeters, as I do, you probably have noticed there is frequent mention of weather that implies a connection to climate change. Otherwise, what's the point, right? By way of example, browse Bill McKibben's tweets. He's become a dutiful chronicler of weather-related bad news. If you want to know that a bridge in Oklahoma buckled from the heat, or that rainfall in India's grainbelt is 70 percent below average this year, he's your man. This obsession doesn't seem like a healthy habit; it's as if he strapped himself down, Clockwork Orange style, to a continuous feed of weather news from all over the world. But he's hardly alone. Other climate writers diligently track the latest storm front to move in over New York City and the heat index in parched regions of the Midwest. Let it be said: Today is a good time to be ...