Always Look On The Bright Side

[poliphilo]

I love heavy rain. Yesterday we had bouts of it. There was one just before Ailz and I set out on foot for the health centre and another just after we arrived back home. Good timing, eh?

Of course I'd rather watch from shelter. Under cover of the Rashomon gate for instance....

Down in Cornwall heavy rain- perhaps the same belt of it that hit us later- caused a flash flood that swept away the heart of the village of Boscastle. Amateur video footage showed cars being swept down stream and out to sea. At the last reckoning no-one appears to have been killed.

It seems like our weather in Britain is getting more and more extreme.

I don't altogether understand the panic over climate change.  The way I see it, it's going to happen whether we humans help things along or not.  During the lifetime of our species there have been any number of switches. There was the Ice Age of course. And before the Ice Age our corner of Northern Europe enjoyed a climate in which giraffes and hippopotami flourished.

Maybe I'm being naive, but I think we underestimate our ability to cope...

P.S. The spell checker has problems with the word "Boscastle".  It suggests that I may have meant to type "bookstall" or "bisexual".

Comments

Survival

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

I don't altogether understand the panic over climate change. The way I see it, it's going to happen whether we humans help things along or not. During the lifetime of our species there have been any number of switches.

It's exciting to me to remember that we really don't have much information--how long have we been recording information about climate? We've been on this planet in our present form for a very short time. There may be interesting shifts coming soon!

I've often thought it would be fun to be part of a Grand Shift, but only if I got to see what was going on. Obviously. Because if I got wiped out when--say, when the comet hit, well, that's it.

Maybe fun isn't the correct word. Invigorating. Overwhelming. Scary but revitalizing.

When bored silly in my l-o-n-g years of work at a national laboratory, I'd walk in the vast parking lots during lunchtime, look out over the old 1940s brick buildings, and pretend I was one of few survivors after WW III (the circumstances were irrelevant--I could just as well have survived a comet). I'd pick out a structure to live in--usually a small warehouse or welding shack near a creek--and pretend I had no choice, and had to live there. I'd spend happy hours over many walks figuring out a bartering system with the other survivors who'd live within the borders of the sprawling laboratory--I remember particularly savoring a scene in which I went inside one of the big brick buildings with a scrap of soap and traded it for a candle some old woman had. I would always savor my pleasure in inhabiting a small solitary structure rather than being crowded into the brick buildings with the other survivors.

As my life improved (fewer debts, fewer sorrows, better working conditions), I found I no longer wanted to make up survival tales.

I think this mechanism is built in. I think we'll cope with almost anything if we want to survive enough.

Re: Survival

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I was always fascinated by pictures of the "frost fairs" they used to hold on the Thames in the late 16th century. These days it is unthinkable that the Thames should freeze over. I don't believe it happened during the Middle Ages either.

It was an anomaly- a mini ice age- and people made the most of it. They got out their skates and their sledges and their furs. There's a rather splendid frozen Thames episode in Sally Potter's film version of Orlando.

I think you're right about there being a built-in coping mechanism. I remember when I was a small boy we were told (by some barmy religious group) that life on earth was going to be wiped out by a huge tidal wave (they even named the day). I thought this was a thrilling idea ( because of course I would be one of the few survivors) and had all my plans laid for a Robinson Crusoe existence.