It wasn't that long ago that global warming was mostly discussed as (and believed to be) a distant threat-- the scope, timing and severity of its impacts considered uncertain. Then in recent years, as climate scientists began studying and asserting linkages between greenhouses gases and severe weather events, the discourse shifted.
We are now at the point where everything from typhoons and mountain climbing tragedies to civil wars and wildfires are seen through the prism of global warming. This is not to discount man-made climate change as a contributing factor to particular extreme weather events and related disasters; I'm just making an observation about the one dimensional lens increasingly used by many to view the world at large. By suggesting this, am I off-message, unhelpful, contrarian? Regardless, no one can dispute the new discourse of climate change as an immediate and urgent concern. This week's orchestrated roll-out of a new U.S. government report on climate change officially cements the "new normal," a phrase used to characterize everything happening now in the context of climate change.
