China's Water Problem

This summer's weather has been intense. In Beijing, flash floods paralyzed the capital in late July and killed at least 77 people. A storm that flooded Manila turned the Philippines' capital into what one official called "Water World."  Hong Kong raised the Signal Ten typhoon warning for the first time in 13 years.

Welcome to the new normal of more intense weather. Two centuries of heavy fossil fuel use have probably pushed climate change beyond a tipping point. That means brutal storms will become more common. So, too, will droughts and intense heat, such as much of the United States is enduring – weather that is more extreme than that seen in the Dust Bowl days of Depression-era America in the 1930s.