Oh, Crapdoodles

[browngirl]

On the other hand....

A massive earthquake has hit the Subcontinent, and apparently the death toll from Hurricane Stan (STAN? Dear sweet God, soon they'll have to start the alphabet over again if this goes on) is near 2000 people.

Am I an ignorant American, or have there been more than the average number of natural disasters in this past year or so?

Comments

[teddywolf.livejournal.com]

Ours is the natural disaster continent (yes, I am serious), just not the only place where these things happen. Well, with a possible exception for hurricanes.

Let's see:
Far more intense hurricanes, including two three potent ones in a year.
Mega tsunami, huge death tolls.
Strong earthquake with a large death toll.

Not including famines, which are far slower, we are approaching the 200,000 mark for people killed by major natural disasters.

We've had a bumper year for major swift natural disasters. I wonder when some people will admit that maybe Nature can still whup us hard.
Global warming is real. More energy in the atmosphere means more weather patterns created by that energy, and thus more storms - including, at the extreme, hurricanes. Also, the thought just occured to me: if the planet's crust heats up a little bit on the average - and I grant you that rock melts at far higher temperatures than ice - might that not also contribute to more tectonic shifts? I grant you that the shifts themselves would be less potent if they happened more often, but they'd still be a pain and could trigger more volcanic activity.