The End of the World? Or Just Our Sometimes Inhospitable Planet?

Earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes, tsumanis. Wildfires, pipeline explosions. It seems like there are more of all of these going on, and I'm sure people are thinking, and asking one another, What's going on? Many people may see divine action here. For tens and hundreds of thousands of years, mankind has seen supernatural beings as being behind the actions of the forces of Nature.

In the last couple of years there have been earthquakes in Haiti, Japan, New Zealand, Peru; and in the US in California, Colorado, and Virginia—and one here in the Midwest, I believe (I forget where it was centered).

There are always earthquakes because the Earth is a geophysically active planet, with tectonic plates continually moving and shifting, colliding with and sinking beneath one another. I don't know whether statistics would show that they have been more frequent lately. If so, there is surely an explanation. Someone said that the Earth's poles recently shifted—which is not an unheard of occurrence, by any means—and that that is behind the recent earthquake activity.

Climate change, and specifically the warming of the planet, means that there is more energy—that is, heat—in the atmosphere, and that very simply means that, when there are storms, there is more energy available to those storms and they are going to be more violent.

So, I don't think that we are seeing signs of "the last days" or Armageddon, as some people may think.

Update, September 3, 2011
Here is an interesting article on the recent prevalence of natural disasters, with comments from meteorologists:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/03/disasters-in-us-an-extrem_n_947750.html?icid=maing-grid7|maing5|dl3|sec3_lnk1|92672

Copyright © 2011 by Richard Stein

What's Changed in the World. Part 3 - Science

In some fields of science, progress may have been frustratingly slow—both to the general pubic and to the professionals in those fields. For example, it is still not possible to predict volcanic eruptions or tornadoes--and warnings of imminent tornado strikes are all too short. Basically, warnings are issued only once a tornado has actually formed and been spotted.

However, it is in the biomedical fields that we have seen astonishing progress. With many miraculous new drugs and new surgical procedures, such as transplants, many illnesses and medical conditions are no longer death sentences. Patients with certain types of cancer now have much longer life expectancies. Patients with HIV/AIDS can now often live long with the virus. Generally, people are living long lives, now, with many illnesses and conditions that would have shortened their lives a few decades ago.

There are entirely new kinds of medical imaging (CT scans and MRI); and, the sequencing of the human genome has almost unlimited possibilities for associating diseases with specific genes and maybe also permitting new treatments.

I can't comment too much on the physical sciences except maybe astronomy, which has intersected my life at several junctures. Astronomy has made a lot of progress with incredible new tools such as the Hubble Space Telescope.

The field of computers, both computer hardware and software, has probably done more to transform our lives than any other technical field; but I've covered a lot of this in the posting on changes to communication.

Copyright © 2010 by Richard Stein

Some Random Thoughts

Maybe you've heard that Continental Airlines and United are going to merge. They're going to call the new company Con-U.

Why is it that tornadoes always seem to hit Goobersville? My theory is that tornadoes just love to eat trailer parks. I guess they're tasty.

When I hear a noise, often I can't tell right away if it's me wheezing or an outside noise (ah, the joys of getting old).

Copyright (c) 2010 by Richard Stein