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The recent tornado(s), and the resultant devastation that ripped through parts of Alabama, Mississippi and Georgia, and seven other southern states, has been labeled the worst natural disaster to hit the United States since Hurricane Katrina. Watch the video of the mile-wide, F5 twister that leveled Tuscaloosa Alabama and you can see why. Entire neighborhoods were obliterated, cars flung like rag dolls or stomped right into the ground, houses lifted and flung off their foundations, and lives destroyed. It has been reported that this one tornado packed winds in excess of 260 miles per hour -- a massive swirling rampage of Mother Nature devouring all in its path. This mighty tornado traveled more than 300 miles before it blew itself out, destroying all in its path and much that was not. When the storms had passed, hundreds were dead, thousands injured, and millions of dollars in damage were left in the wake. The most common comment from the survivors: "It looks like a war zone. Just unbelievable." Unbelievable indeed...and it does look like war, one that we are seemingly powerless to fight. And it appears as if it is getting worse.
Thomas Freedman, in his seminal work Hot, Flat and Crowded, argues that a warming world reveals itself through amplifications of normal weather patterns. Areas prone to drought will have longer and more severe dry spells...areas prone floods will have more severe rain events...areas prone to snow will see longer and harsher winters...and areas prone to tornadoes will see a dramatic increase in the frequency and severity of these freaks of nature.
Talk about hitting the nail on the head...
No matter what you think about the Global Warming debate, any thinking person has to admit that our world is changing in some fundamental and alarming ways. As a blogger, I can remember writing just last year about the terrible tornadoes of 2010, and here we are one year later and those storms dim in comparison to the rampage of 2011. I wrote last winter about the so-called epic cold of 2010, only to have it eclipsed by the monstrous winter snows of 2011, (and it is still snowing in the northern states as I write this blog, May 1, 2011). I also remember writing about the Texas drought of 2009, and here we are two years later and Texas is experiencing its worst drought in more than 100 years, with no relief in sight, (2009 seems like a summer vacation compared to the emerging bake of 2011, and much of the state is afire as a result).
And all around us, the world appears to be unraveling, with the scale and frequency of earthquakes on the rise, radioactive poison riding the jet stream and circling the planet, riots and revolution spreading like an infectious disease and an emerging realization that the global economy is hanging by its fingernails.
When will the madness stop? Nobody knows. But if you look to the unrelenting march in both scale and frequency of these events over time, you have to make a startling conclusion: not any time soon. Each year does appear to be worse than the previous, and 2011 has a real attitude.
Bummer.
I recently read a pseudo-scientific article about the possibility that time is speeding up -- the pace, rate, and scale of events both human and natural, and even time itself, are increasing exponentially, growing one upon the other. Whether the author's thesis is sound or not, his claim strikes an intuitive resonance, as it does appear as if we live in exponential times. Technological advancement, population growth, natural and man-made events (from war to hurricanes), all appear to be on some strange and destructive rocket ride.
Nobody knows where it will end, but one thing we can all agree to...its beginning to look like war. Unbelievable.
What can we do? Prepare.
