So, what’s the deal with natural disasters these days? It feels like the past few years have been rife with Mother Nature’s fury, at least for those of us in good ol’ New England. Last year, Hurricane Irene put most of Connecticut out of power for a week and the second everyone got it back we were blasted by ‘Snowpocalypse’ in mid-October. Imagine that: a blizzard in October. The Playoffs hadn’t even started. Go back a bit farther, expand the viewing lens, and we see the devastating tsunami in Japan last year. Hurricane Katrina absolutely destroyed Louisiana and the Gulf of Mexico in 2005 and another tsunami tore apart India and Sri Lanka, reaching even Madagascar, in 2004. Why does it seem that natural disasters are getting more frequent and disastrous? Is the Apocalypse really upon us?
Personally, I think these weather delusions are all in our heads. Think back as far as you can. Can you remember the great storm of ‘02? 2002, 1902, 2 A.D., it does not matter. Every year there is some natural disaster, somewhere in the world, that affects one person or another. It could have been a tsunami in the East Pacific or a blizzard in the Northwest Territories, but chances are, there was some storm that deeply impacted people somewhere. We have to take this approach when trying to understand recent natural disasters. We remember them because we were there; we read about them in the newspapers, emptied the flooded basement ourselves or heard about them from family who lived there.
However, with today’s constant news coverage on every event everywhere, people hear more about these disasters, which makes it seem like their frequency has increased, while the likelihood is that they have not. Psychological heuristics point to the availability of events to increase their presence in problem solving and thinking. In other words, if something is heard about with greater frequency it appears to have grown. Have you ever met a new person on campus and then start to see them everywhere? They have always been there; you are just really looking now.
Science shares the same ideas about this increased frequency of Mother Nature raining destruction upon us, with a few exceptions. Increases in global population, especially in areas with higher propensity for natural disaster, such as coasts and valleys, have increased our exposure to these calamities. The more people who live there, the more people who are affected. Other evidence of increased natural disasters would be the disputed “theory” of global warming. Whether you believe it exists or not doesn’t matter. Science points to an increase in the Earth’s temperature, whether this is a natural heating or cooling that our planet is going through or man-made force. Rising water tides encroach on coastal lands, increasing flood and tsunami destruction and output.
Natural disasters are, for lack of a better word, natural. They happen and that is a normal part of life. Maybe we are living in the age before the Apocalypse; it is 2012, after all. These storms could just be the Earth getting ready to capsize within itself, or, it could all be in our heads. Fire raining down from the sky happens sometimes. It was unfair for the citizens of Pompeii to be there when it happened, but that is just life. •
