I’ve been paying close attention to both my east and west for the past few weeks. To the East the biggest political movement since the fall of the Berlin Wall seems to be happening in North Africa and parts of the Arab world. To the West the destination for my March trip of a lifetime is being battered over and over again by typhoons and flooding. Until now the locales I’ll be visiting have been spared and the worst of the flooding which has taken place in a part of Australia which I would be missing. That’s changing tonight. The worst typhoon since World War 1 is about to hit and add more misery.
The uprisings in the Arab world have everything to do with the major draughts in Central Asia and Australia that have greatly reduced wheat crops and driven food prices sky high.
And we’re just north of one of the most colossal winter storms to have crossed the US. My sister in law reported the lowest temps she’s ever experienced in Dallas over the last twenty years – Green Bay friendly wind chills of three below zero. The Duluth weatherman lingered over his North American maps tonight to point out that the temps in Northern Mexico are in the twenties. He said he’d never seen such a thing before.
That’s just some of the extreme weather we’ve been seeing. There was the historic flooding in Pakistan too and probably more. Its almost enough to make you question whether Rush Limbaugh et al should really be that cocky when they call Global Warming a fraud.
I was in New Orleans about a month before Katrina hit. I’ll be in Cairns about a month after Yasi hits. Maybe its just me. My honeymoon was a soggy mess too.
