my Thinking spot: "god was protecting them"

06 May 2007

"god was protecting them"

says representative dennis mckinney of greensburg, kansas about a few that survived - adding insult to injury, death and complete devestation... as if god was punishing those who died? punishing an entire city by destroying it? you can keep your god, dennis. this would be exactly why i don't have one.

i still can't get my brain around the images coming from that F5 twister - a mile wide twister! - that touched down friday. unfreakingbelievable. just LOOK at this! i mean, it's one thing to hear about a weather occurance this powerful, but a whole 'nother thing to see what it has done:

how scary! i think they're still looking for people beneath the rubble. while many made it to a basement, a city's worth of structures fell straight down - as evidenced by this photo snapped by jaime oppenheimer for the wichita eagle. i hope they are getting the support and help they need - but everything surrounding hurricane katrina then (and now) makes me highly skeptical and worried. i'm sending all the good vibes i have greensburg way, for whatever it is worth...

i remember a few months after we'd moved to missouri from california, the tornado sirens began blaring. i was TERRIFIED. my mom was born and raised in california and had zero prior experience with such things. all i knew was that our barn was listing to one side after a tornado passed nearby years before. i don't know how it was standing still to this day.

i literally threw all of my favorite stuffed animals in a garbage bag and we started to run. we had no basement in our little farm house. we had to run a half a mile to our neighbors house. i don't think i've ever run so hard in my life - literally or figuratively. it was perfectly quiet, the sky was the oddest green yellow i'd ever seen. as i got older, i'd go out and sit on the roof, hoping to see one, while my mom would scream for me to get my "ass in the basement RIGHT NOW!" the fear turned to fascination over the years... i've been known to hop in my car and head in the direction of reported nearby sightings. not the sharpest crayon in the box, eh? not the shiniest apple in the bucket...

so i was thinking... as i always do in times like this - no matter what we do or say - mother nature can fuck it up in a matter of a few seconds, minutes. it never ceases to amaze me.

and anytime something of this magnitude strikes, i think about war - how easy it is to jump to war cries of revenge and retribution. but what about a war on weather? there is no such thing. if some group had created a situation that resulted in damage like this, "we" would be all hell bent to exact revenge. but what if we chose to respond to events the way we respond to natural disasters - i mean, if we can just collectively begin to pull together to help each other out, to rebuild instead of embracing to fear and hate and bombs instead... there is always another way.

as for our neck of the woods - it's been storming here all day long. our basement is flooded and for some reason, our back deck isn't draining like it used to - leaving two inches of standing water that is rising ever so slowly to our back door. if it doesn't stop raining soon, we may have ourselves a flood in our kitchen.

welcome to the freak ass weather that global climate change is bringing on...

Labels: weather

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"if you think you are too small to make a difference, try sleeping in a closed room with a mosquito." ~african proverb

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GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE!

Q: What causes global warming?

A: Carbon dioxide and other air pollution that is collecting in the atmosphere like a thickening blanket, trapping the sun's heat and causing the planet to warm up. Coal-burning power plants are the largest U.S. source of carbon dioxide pollution -- they produce 2.5 billion tons every year. Automobiles, the second largest source, create nearly 1.5 billion tons of CO2 annually.

Q: Is the earth really getting hotter?

A: Yes. Although local temperatures fluctuate naturally, over the past 50 years the average global temperature has increased at the fastest rate in recorded history. And experts think the trend is accelerating: the 10 hottest years on record have all occurred since 1990. Scientists say that unless we curb global warming emissions, average U.S. temperatures could be 3 to 9 degrees higher by the end of the century.

Q: Are warmer temperatures causing bad things to happen?

A: Global warming is already causing damage in many parts of the United States. In 2002, Colorado, Arizona and Oregon endured their worst wildfire seasons ever. The same year, drought created severe dust storms in Montana, Colorado and Kansas, and floods caused hundreds of millions of dollars in damage in Texas, Montana and North Dakota. Since the early 1950s, snow accumulation has declined 60 percent and winter seasons have shortened in some areas of the Cascade Range in Oregon and Washington. Of course, the impacts of global warming are not limited to the United States. In 2003, extreme heat waves caused more than 20,000 deaths in Europe and more than 1,500 deaths in India. And in what scientists regard as an alarming sign of events to come, the area of the Arctic's perennial polar ice cap is declining at the rate of 9 percent per decade.

Q: Is global warming making hurricanes worse?

A: Global warming doesn't create hurricanes, but it does make them stronger and more dangerous. Because the ocean is getting warmer, tropical storms can pick up more energy and become more powerful. So global warming could turn, say, a category 3 storm into a much more dangerous category 4 storm. In fact, scientists have found that the destructive potential of hurricanes has greatly increased along with ocean temperature over the past 35 years.

Q: Is there really cause for serious concern?

A: Yes. Global warming is a complex phenomenon, and its full-scale impacts are hard to predict far in advance. But each year scientists learn more about how global warming is affecting the planet, and many agree that certain consequences are likely to occur if current trends continue. Among these: 1. Melting glaciers, early snowmelt and severe droughts will cause more dramatic water shortages in the American West. 2. Rising sea levels will lead to coastal flooding on the Eastern seaboard, in Florida, and in other areas, such as the Gulf of Mexico. 3. Warmer sea surface temperatures will fuel more intense hurricanes in the southeastern Atlantic and Gulf coasts. 4. Forests, farms and cities will face troublesome new pests and more mosquito-borne diseases. 5. Disruption of habitats such as coral reefs and alpine meadows could drive many plant and animal species to extinction.

Q: Could global warming trigger a sudden catastrophe?

A: Recently, researchers -- and even the U.S. Defense Department -- have investigated the possibility of abrupt climate change, in which gradual global warming triggers a sudden shift in the earth's climate, causing parts of the world to dramatically heat up or cool down in the span of a few years.

Q: What country is the largest source of global warming pollution?

A: The United States. Though Americans make up just 4 percent of the world's population, we produce 25 percent of the carbon dioxide pollution from fossil-fuel burning -- by far the largest share of any country. In fact, the United States emits more carbon dioxide than China, India and Japan, combined. Clearly America ought to take a leadership role in solving the problem. And as the world's top developer of new technologies, we are well positioned to do so -- we already have the know-how.

Q: How can we cut global warming pollution?

A: It's simple: By reducing pollution from vehicles and power plants. Right away, we should put existing technologies for building cleaner cars and more modern electricity generators into widespread use. We can increase our reliance on renewable energy sources such as wind, sun and geothermal. And we can manufacture more efficient appliances and conserve energy.

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my Thinking spot

06 May 2007

"god was protecting them"

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