Overview

The theme of bipolarity is seen through various means: the natural and the man-made; production and destruction; energy and adynamia; peace and apocalypse; equilibrium and disequilibrium -- from the beginning to the end. This emerging view of a complex "bipolar climate machinery" urgently calls for a major research effort in order to decipher and quantify the interplay of atmospheric and social processes. When the world is in no accordance with all the cyclic combinations, a more or less bipolar world cannot be inevitable