Posted by David Sherman on Saturday, October 21, 2006 at 1:17PM :
In Reply to: Re: Speaking of weather: (some PW content) posted by Jerry in Idaho on Saturday, October 21, 2006 at 10:36AM :
I don't have TV, but I always think it's funny when people talk about how there's more storms or earthquakes or volcanoes or wars nowadays than in the past. Well, maybe there were no wars 1 million years ago, but other than that, we live in pretty calm times. The difference is everything that happens anywhere in the world gets reported nowadays. When Tambora blew up, hardly anybody out of earshot knew it happened. When Krakatoa blew up, the telegraph had just been invented and people all over the world knew about it. When Mt St Helens blew up, everybody watched it live on TV. Each exploding volcano was smaller than the previous one, but each was also more famous. Far and away the biggest earthquake in the recorded history of North America happened in New Madrid Missouri, but only a few pioneers were there to experience it and hardly anybody nowadays even knows it happened. If it happened today, St Louis would be levelled and millions of people would be killed and everybody would be asking "What's going wrong with the earth?" and trying blame somebody.
Nowadays if there's a foot of snow in North Dakota in January, the "blizzard" is reported all over the evening news. 100 years ago, that was just normal weather. Likewise with hurricanes in Florida, floods just about anywhere, and forest fires in the pine forests. Weather happens, you deal with it, clean up after it, and life goes on. It's not a "sign" of anything, either global warming or the second coming. It's just weather.
Speaking of which, we had a big thunderstorm 2 nights ago. Lasted for hours. Haven't had any thuderstorm to amount to anything all summer, and then a huge one pops up in the middle of October without even being forecast. I forgot to listen to the radio for Official Information.
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