This is written following my seeing “THE INDYPENDENT” bi-weekly of October 19 - November 8, 2005, published by the New York City Independent Media Center, part of indymedia.org e-mail: imc-nyc-print@indymedia.org.The article is “How Climate Will Change The Face Of The Planet: Thresholds, Switches, Amplifiers & Chaos”, written by Mike Davis, self declared “Prophet of Doom”, author of City of Quartz and of Monster at Our Door: The Global Threat of Avian Flu, and currently in writing “Planet of Slums”. The noted article first appeared on www.Tomdispatch.com which is a project of “the Nation Institute” and managed by Tom Engelhardt.

What attracted my attention is the mention of a March 2004 Hurricane that developed in the SOUTHERN ATLANTIC and landed in the Brazilian State of Santa Catarina. This was the absolutely first known hurricane in the Southern Atlantic and an event without precedent in Brazil, not having a naming system for hurricanes in Brazil, they simply called it Catarina.

So, the most astonishing event to scientists is actually not Katrina, or what we like to call KatRita, but rather Catarina.

“Textbook orthodoxy had long excluded the possibility of such an event, sea temperatures, experts claimed, were too low and wind shear too powerful to allow tropical depressions to evolve into cyclones south of the Atlantic Equator.”

The author proceeds in looking at the non-linearity of the components of global climate - air, water, ice, and vegetation. At certain thresholds they can switch from one state of organization to another, with catastrophic consequences for species too finely tuned to the old norms. Do you remember the Michael Moore movie? Yes, some critic called Mike Davis the Mike Moore in a lab coat.

Mike Davis takes us back to the Younger Dryas event of 12,800 years ago when an ice shield broke, created the St. Lawrence River and cold melting waters caused water temperature to change, and the flow of water in the ocean to change, leading to massive climate change. The point of all this is that Catarina may not be just a sign of intensification of the so called natural disasters, i.e. KatRita or the tornados of Mid-America, but really a harbinger of future abrupt change. Something worthwhile of our interest.