Most of my blog posts are the result of almost spontaneous inspiration. I just get the urge to write about something and although they tend to be published weekly, there is no set timetable. You can't schedule inspiration! When I look back at my posts, I note they seem to fall into three categories - posts that are topical, based on a recent NEWS item; posts that are based on general OBSERVATIONS; posts that are on issues that I feel PASSIONATE about. Today's post has a thread that runs through all three categories.
Dominating the NEWS today is the horrendous aftermath of the typhoon, named Haiyan, that hit the Phillipines, which has been reported as the strongest storm ever recorded. It's a part of the world that is used to typhoons and there were warnings for Haiyan but nevertheless the destruction has been unimaginable and left an estimated 10,000 dead. National and international relief and rescue efforts are of course underway, but it will take months, if not years, for the affected areas to return to some sort of normality and the lost lives will never be recovered. Disasters such as this make other world issues pale into insignificance, particularly problems where the solutions are directly controllable by the world's inhabitants. For example, the issue of controlling Iran's nuclear activities, such that it does not develop a nuclear weapon capability, can be solved by debate, negotiation and agreement, as well as, of course, an overarching desire to succeed by all parties. The Phillipines tragedy, on the other hand, was an act of nature, over which mankind has no control........but is that true?
Over the past couple of decades, from my OBSERVATIONS of natural disasters, my feeling is that the rate and severity of calamitous acts of nature appear to be on the increase. I have not collected any statistics to support that claim. It's just a feeling. Floods, storms, droughts, hurricanes, typhoons, earthquakes, tsunamis, fires, blizzards, heat waves, extreme cold........seem to get regular and extensive news coverage. But are these acts of nature all unavoidable or does mankind have an influence and therefore a responsibility? Well let me digress to one of my old chestnuts, correlation and causation. Correlation does not imply causation. For example if the cockerel crows each morning at sunrise, the cockerel will not be causing the sun to rise! On the other hand, the rising of the sun could be causing the cockerel to crow. There are many more subtle examples of of incorrect conclusions from correlations. After the Second World War the rate of pregnancies in the UK closely followed (i.e. correlated with) the number of bananas that were being imported. Were the bananas causing the pregnancies?! Well if you believe that you need to study biology. It could have been pregnant women had a desire to eat bananas. It might have been the 'feel good factor' at the end of the war lead to a desire for reproduction and, quite separately, the urge to buy bananas. Or it might have just been a coincidence i.e. no apparent causal link between the pregnancies and the bananas.
For many years I was not totally convinced of the causal link between mankind's generation of carbon dioxide and climate change, but in recent times I have changed my view. All the evidence suggests there is a definite correlation between the emission of carbon dioxide from, for example, the burning of fossil fuels and global warming, which is causing climatic changes. I have become PASSIONATE about this issue (see my previous blog post) and I am so frustrated that there seems no sense of urgency by the world's political communities to take the issue seriously. Now I'm not suggesting that Typhoon Haiyan was avoidable. That would be a hypothesis that could be neither proved or disproved. But what I do believe is that paying lip service to green issues could contribute to more disasters.
That's my blog post for today and my thoughts are with all those affected by Typhoon Haiyan.
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