The sky is falling?

A dear friend of mine sent me a link to a YouTube video that collected all the "unusual" happenings that have been going on since the beginning of the year. Mayan Calendar so or so ... there's lots of creepy things happening, and I have to say, I think I may agree.

First of all, except for a couple of mysterious sound reportings ... that is, people were hearing strange sounds coming from the sky (?) ... almost all of the "strange events" happened in the US. Second, the most cited news channel reporting on the events was Fox. Finally, the reports were about things that people (as they repeatedly intoned) had never seen before. Well, I'm convinced. Aren't you?

OK, granted, a few of the reports were actually interesting: the absolute increase in the number of severe tornados, even in areas where they don't "normally" appear. That's interesting, but it is more interesting for people who don't believe in global warming than for those of us who know it is. There has been some pretty severe sun activity lately, too, but my scientist friends tell me that we don't know what it might have been like at other times because reports are scarce and couldn't have been observed like we can observe them today, so we're starting with a pretty fresh sheet of paper on that one. And then, there is all this volcano and earthquake activity. Excuse me: I lived in California for 14 years and if I found earthquakes, even larger ones "unusual", well that pretty well described me as unusual to my peers. What do you expect when you live on the Ring of Fire?

There are plenty of folks out there who love (or would love) to cash in on people's fears, but if we look at the threats: tornadoes, earthquakes, hurricanes/typhoons, etc., couldn't it just be that the Earth is simply being what it is: the Earth? OK, we may be having (and I do believe we are having) an effect on the weather overall. You can't pump as much crap into the air and water as we do, you can't raze as much rainforest as we do without some kind of consequences. But if you're in denial, well, you'll just deny it anyway. My question is, what does it matter? Why all the concern? What is there to get all upset about? Nature is nature and we're all a part of it. And ... ?