By Keith Johnson Tom Wright reports from the Bali climate-change
conference: In an Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore uses a hydraulic
platform to reach on an exponential curve to where global
temperatures are likely to be in 30 or 40 years. But at the
U.N.’s climate-change meeting in Bali, Indonesia, a number of
experts are calling for a sharper focus on how climate will
change over months, not generations. That’s because for most
people, especially the world’s poorest, forewarning of short-
term changes in temperatures can help them make life-or-death
decisions, these scientists say. It’s also because scientists
say models that predict climate can do so with accuracy only
over a year or so. The International Research Institute for
Climate and Society, part of the Earth Institute at Columbia
University, outlined a project to help farmers on the Indonesian
part of Borneo island to predict up to six months ahead when dry
weather is likely to cause uncontrollable bush fires. The
institute aims to raise funding to pay f