Rape of the Earth

It continues relentlessly and apparently even worse than ever imagined. Selective deforestation (mahogany) can only be properly estimated by satellite pictures. Vast areas of destruction are obvious, but this is more subtle. Heavy equipment dragged across country has its own mode of destruction: just trampled and crushed. Total waste and wanton destruction.

The hunger for paper is as bad (worse) as that for oil. They both involve the consumption of a resource except that at least paper can be recycled to some extent. So much for the paperless office ethic. It was never going to happen. The hardcopy backup is still preferred to electronically stored information. Both can be altered though the electronic method is perhaps easier. It’s becoming a less clear boundary virtually on a daily basis. Watch out for the Man-to-Mars journey: how will we ever detect a hoax? Lessons will have been learnt after Apollo to deflect questions ever being asked. Billions of dollars later what is there to account for it all? What is the real purpose of such an alleged mission - it won’t happen, of course.

But I digress. It must be too soon to be sure that the large number of hurricanes globally (2005) has anything to do with global warming. Possibly. There are always many such storms in any hurricane season. More northern hemisphere hurricanes than southern hemisphere cyclones in 2005? It just seems that this year is worse than previous years. Is this my perception (I have never personally experienced a hurricane first hand - thank goodness!) or is it a reality?

At least it must be yet another wakeup call to someone who is still sleeping.