have taken to the airwaves with the message that news coverage of weather has to evolve, while political leaders, notably including the former G.O.P. chairman Michael Steele, have suggested that policy makers should change their tone on the issue as well.
     It certainly would be nice if figures in the media and, more importantly, in government chose to have a long overdue discussion with the public about ways to mitigate the effects of climate change and to put in place measures that would begin to reduce carbon emissions. Yet sadly, the only discussions now taking place that seem to get any traction are about how to transport tar sands from Canada to refineries in the U.S. and about which candidate for the White House believes that manmade global warming is about as hard to believe as evolution. You can blame President Obama’s failure to pass meaningful energy legislation on the recession that he inherited, but there’s no reason that a weak economy should preclude our leaders from outlining a path forward on an issue that will likely plague the country and the world no matter how hard inconvenient it may be to address.
     Hurricanes have been around since long before the first coal-burning plants were built, and so were forest fires and tornados. We can’t say definitively that Irene had anything to do with a warmer ocean, because yes, no one weather event can stand for the overall trend. But the fact is that the 5-decade forecast is in, and it looks like the unique weather events, like the one that dominated news coverage over recent days, are going to become increasingly less unique. From here on out, whether we’re talking about climate or weather, we’re basically talking about the same thing. Now let’s talk about it.