Dirty Little Secret

Disasters have been with us since we have existed, Of course in primitive time we generally were fully at the mercy of the elements, having no real ability to predict these events.

We now do get advance warnings on some disasters, but of course others aren't as considerate.

I've been in areas that have been hit by natural disasters and have had loss of power, shortages of gasoline and groceries, but I've never really been a victim, probably just due to luck.

My belongings have never been washed away, my houses have never suffered significant damage and no one close to me has been badly hurt or killed.

As much as I'd like to take credit for any of this, and maybe we did take some common sense precautions, it is clearly a matter of luck that I've been relatively unscathed.

Now we are watching the scenes from Houston and the human tragedy involved and have to wonder if there isn't some lesson to be learned from recent events.

A number of years ago I was in Galveston and took a tour of the hurricane preventive measures they took after a devastating hurricane in 1900. I was there around 1994 and they had not has a similar hurricane in the years between.

We've always had fairly big hurricanes every couple of years but it is pretty clear that we now seem to have bigger and bigger ones that do much more damage than previously, and those were pretty bad.

What you have stopped hearing is weathermen/women describing the latest hurricane as the storm of the century, because they know worse ones will be coming.

Its sort of a dirty little secret that everyone knows but some want to deny that climate change is raising water levels and water temperatures guaranteeing stronger storms and more damage.

Now any one weather event is not a trend but we have plenty of trend data and statistics demonstrating the facts.

It is dirty, but it isn't really a secret.