Today’s climate forecast: grim | TerraPass (step right up and get your carbon offsets here)

A story that I’ve been sort of ignoring because it isn’t really so much a “story” as a “depressing reality” is that the science of climate change has recently taken a turn for the deeply grim.

Rising seas are increasing the salinity of groundwater in India, wiping out farmland. Warming is significantly altering and degrading the character of American forests. Oceans are becoming more acidic. Drought threatens California. Worst of all, a recent paper suggests that climate change is essentially irreversible on a timescale that matters to humans.

David Frum: Message to Republicans -- time to get off the pot - Full Comment

If change is coming, Republicans need to be part of it. Health care change can be shaped in ways that are better or worse from a Republican point of view. We have red lines: no direct government delivery of health services. But we also have compromises we can live with: the amount of subsidy to the currently uninsured, for example.

The same is true on climate. Cap and trade that delivers big benefits to incumbent industries is obnoxious. A carbon tax that could replace the payroll tax should be very acceptable.

Once passed, the health and climate bills will be very difficult to alter. They will become part of the very structure of American society and economy, like Medicare or the home mortgage deduction. If these laws are written without reference to our views, they will reshape American society without reference to our views.