As with all the bad news from Iraq and Af-Pak, sooner or later the bad news on the climate acquires a stultifying sameness. Only when a surge is in sight — troop surge, storm surge — does one’s news radar jolt awake momentarily. The cause of this deadened state is not an unassimilable surfeit of information, rather, it is a shortage of the right sort of information. Despite the barrage of news and opinion, we don’t know enough to figure out what the right questions are. Without that foundation, our knowledge rests on a bog, into which it is liable to settle with a gentle burp or two of greenhouse gas (or, hot air).
Side effects of Camila