Thoughts Before The Alarm Sounds

     In the first two and a half months of 2011 the world has experienced an unprecedented string of floods, earthquakes and a cataclysmic tsunami. Now man has added a major disaster of his own: nuclear meltdown. Because Japan has been through all of these calamities before, it is probably the best prepared nation in the world to withstand these events, but the results indicate that no matter how extensive the preparations, they can be overwhelmed by nature.      Of course, this does not mean that we should not prepare for unexpected disasters to the best of our ability. It does take, however, something we do not seem to possess: the will. Here is an example of where we stand in that department:      According to The Christian Science Monitor , the Obama administration had decided to run a simulated terrorist 'dirty bomb' attack on Las Vegas last May. The test was canceled after Senator Harry Reid (D, Nevada) objected, saying...

      Many people are calling the BP oil spill Obama’s Katrina. The reference, of course, is to the inefficient response of the Federal government to the catastrophe incurred when hurricane Katrina came ashore along the Louisiana coastline in 2005. So how do the two events compare?       As a result of Katrina, at least 1,836 people lost their lives, and an estimated 1,000,000 people were redistributed from the gulf coast states to other areas. As of July 1, 2006 it was estimated New Orleans had lost almost 220,000 residents. On March 30, 2010, 260 families were still living in trailers provided by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.       The government has been criticized for its slow response to Katrina, but under the National Response Plan, the responsibility for the management of such disasters lies with local authorities until they ask for help. New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin had ordered an involuntary ...

      [The Lord] said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree which I commanded you not to eat?” The man said, “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit from the tree, and I ate.”       Genesis – New Revised Standard Version.       One of the tasks I had to perform at my job as a cost accountant was to speak to factory foremen to determine the cause of irregularities in production costs. In particular, one man stands out in my memory; his first response when I asked about a problem was always, “Whose responsibility is that?”       It was not my job to establish responsibility – my job was to 1.) pinpoint the problem, 2.) fix it, and 3.) set up safeguards so that it didn’t happen again. But the foreman’s first impulse was to determine where to point the finger. (No, not that finger.)       When I had my accounting busin...

      Deniers to the contrary, there is no rational doubt that the globe is getting warmer. Dramatic pictures of cracking and shrinking polar ice caps at both poles, the poleward migration of warm water animal and vegetable species, and the gradual submersion of islands testify to the fact. Already natives of Papua New Guinea's Carteret island are being moved to Bougainville island as their homeland disappears under rising seas.       No one can say for sure how long the seas will continue to rise, but it is estimated that a rise of 50 centimeters, about 19 inches, would overflow the heavily populated coasts of countries such as Bangladesh, and cause low-lying island states like the Indian Ocean's Maldives and South Pacific's Kiribati and Tuvalu to disappear. Two uninhabited Kiribati islands, Tebua Tarawa and Abanuea, were engulfed in 1999, according to the South Pacific Regional Environment Programme, and the island of Tepuka Savilivil...