Catastrophic Weather Events Are Becoming the New Normal --
Are You Ready for Life on Our Planet Circa 2011?


For two decades now we've been ignoring the increasingly
impassioned pleas of scientists that our burning of fossil
fuels was a bad idea. And now we're getting pinched.

by Bill McKibben  
Alternet
February 2, 2011  |    

If you were in the space shuttle looking down yesterday,
you would have seen a pair of truly awesome, even fearful,
sights.

Much of North America was obscured by a 2,000-mile storm
dumping vast quantities of snow from Texas to
Maine--between the wind and snow, forecasters described it
as "probably the worst snowstorm ever to affect" Chicago,
and said waves as high as 25 feet were rocking buoys on
Lake Michigan.

Meanwhile, along the shore of Queensland in Australia, the
vast cyclone Yasi was sweeping ashore; though the storm
hit at low tide, the country's weather service warned that
"the impact is likely to be more life threatening than any
experienced during recent generations," especially since
its torrential rains are now falling on ground already
flooded from earlier storms. Here's how Queensland premier
Anna Bligh addressed her people before the storm hit: "We
know that the long hours ahead of you are going to be the
hardest that you face. We will be thinking of you every
minute of every hour between now and daylight and we hope
that you can feel our thoughts, that you will take
strength from the fact that we are keeping you close and
in our hearts."

Welcome to our planet, circa 2011--a planet that, like
some unruly adolescent, has decided to test the
boundaries. For two centuries now we've been burning coal
and oil and gas and thus pouring carbon into the
atmosphere; for two decades now we've been ignoring the
increasingly impassioned pleas of scientists that this is
a Bad Idea. And now we're getting pinched.

Oh, there have been snowstorms before, and cyclones--our
planet has always produced extreme events. But by
definition extreme events are supposed to be rare, and all
of a sudden they're not. In 2010 nineteen nations set new
all-time temperature records (itself a record!) and when
the mercury hit 128 in early June along the Indus, the
entire continent of Asia set a new all-time temperature
mark. Russia caught on fire; Pakistan drowned. Munich Re,
the biggest insurance company on earth, summed up the
annus horribilis last month with this clinical phrase:
"the high number of weather-related natural catastrophes
and record temperatures both globally and in different
regions of the world provide further indications of
advancing climate change."

for the rest of this, go to
http://www.alternet.org/environment/149774/
catastrophic_weather_events_are_becoming_the_new_normal_--
_are_you_ready_for_life_on_our_planet_circa_2011/ 

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