I generally take a skeptical view of apocalyptic scenarios like this, but I know enough science to know that such things are indeed possible. There is a sufficient number of scientists who are concerned to make me concerned also. There are all kinds of possible ecological disasters that human beings can and may have already set off. For example, Jacques Cousteau said a decade or so ago that we are pouring so much toxic waste into the oceans that the plankton is dying off; and if the plankton dies, there goes all sea life, because plankton is the basis for the whole oceanic food chain. And biological interaction in the oceans produce 70% of the earth's oxygen. I'd believe Cousteau long before I'd believe a lot of the people who keep saying it ain't so.

Tornadoes in my area (Washington State) are extremely rare. Whenever they do appear, they're usually in eastern Washington where it tends to be hotter than western Washington (the state is divided by the Cascade mountain range). When they do occur, they're weak, short-lived, and rarely even touch down. It was a startling event some years ago when a small tornado did touch down near Yakima in eastern Washington and tore up somebody's garage. But so far this year, Washington State has had five tornadoes, some of which were in western Washington, and most of them occurred within the past five or six weeks! They were considerable more energetic than tornadoes that have appeared before, but fortunately, I haven't heard any reports of major damage or loss of life, certainly nothing like what seems to occur seasonally in the plains states. Nevertheless, this is enough to make folks around here sit up and take notice and start asking what in the hell is going on? I thought all we had to worry about here was the occasional earthquake.

For the government—any government—to simply ignore this because doing something about it such as passing a few laws (or enforcing existing one) restricting the dumping of wastes into the oceans and atmosphere might cost some of its high-finance buddies a nickel or two is dereliction of the worst sort. But you can't count on the governments and the corporations that own them to look any further than the next quarterly report.

Some folks refuse to believe they have a rabid Rottwieler in their pants until it bites 'em in the ass! Problem is that everybody else gets bit too.

Don Firth