I wonder if this could have a similar compounding effect on the ongoing financial crisis like the Dust Bowl had on the Great Depression.

The livelihood of most people in the world depends on a capricious nature. For them, droughts and floods, with the famine and devastation they bring, are regular occurrences. Not being able to fly, besides the possible economic impact, would be a mild inconvenience in comparison.

How will we understand a fickle Nature?


I wonder how our current media frenzic world impacts the answer to this question. It seems to us who check nytimes.com daily that the world is fighting back more than it's ever done so before. There's an earthquake in China, a volcano in iceland, a flood down the way, and all within a few hours of each other. With correspondents all around the world able to update to the internet at moment's notice, how could it not seem to us like nature is attempting to wipe humans off the world forever? How many more news reports of tsunami's and class 9 hurricanes before we become bitter and disparaging towards our great benefactor? Probably never because of course where would we be without its fickleness? It's diversity and danger is its very boon.

Do we really think the occurrence of natural disasters this year is any greater than recent history? Maybe it is but I'm sure in the long run it all evens out and I'm sure natural disasters are still on par with where they were 100 years ago and 1000 before. We are just so dispersed and technologically suited to be able to survive almost anywhere on the planet that it's as if the very tendrils of mother earth are seeking us out with the mind to destroy us.

A fickle nature is how we've always understood it. Maybe only now with these daily threats we are reminded of our mortality. Before the industrial revolution a spastic flood or a summer drought meant life or death. We were always at the whim of nature, that's why the gods were cruel and loving, why in one single day we could curse and bless.

Nature informs our adaptability. Were it to change we change with it or die.

I didn't notice the name of the volcano, but seeing it today I remembered a small news story here in the topic of names, post, from almost a month ago notifying us of the Volcano's eruption, if for no other reason than its strange name.

I didn't think about the dust storms of the Great Depression Damian. Thanks.

Annie, I don't think this is the case of simply more information than the past. I think it's the case that the timeline, and our expectations are different. There were significant earthquakes in Chile before (there is a great Kleist story about it), and we knew about them. This same volcano we know erupted for about a year a century ago, it's simply that a year a century ago seems shorter than a day now. Millions of people dying, in the past, seems less significant than a dozen today. More to the point, like my example with the cellphones, we can understand nature killing, we can't understand it inconveniencing us for a while.

Adaptability -  they are already looking at flying higher or lower than the dust. If not they'll find other ways to combat this. But this is the point, we can't understand our lives changing because of nature. We simply can't. Can you actually imagine, or I should say do you believe, that there won't be flights in and out of Europe for a year? We obviously assume that either the volcano will stop, that we'll adapt, that there will be some kind of solution. I doubt there is a single (sane) person in the world who truly believes there won't be any flights for a year. This incomprehensibility, of all of us, of a change in nature is riveting.

I already mentioned Hume's example of the sun. Hume described, and I'm giving a very loose description, how because we (or I think it was a chicken) see the sun rising every morning we assume it will rise tomorrow as a basic assumption. I think the volcano case is a great example of our incapability of comprehending a change in nature. We can understand an earthquake, a falling rock, some one time occurrence, but a long term change is incomprehensible. Of course if it will last than it will become comprehensible simply by being the status quo.